At U.N summit, Obama reads a letter from a 15 year old Tanzanian girl

On the final day of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, President Barack Obama read out a letter from Eva, a 15 year old girl from rural Tanzania. 

Eva is part of Restless Development Tanzania's programmes, who worked with ONE to get her message read out by the President of the United States of America as the United Nations adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Dear President Obama, 

My name is Eva Tolage, I am 15 years old from Mlowa Village in Tanzania. 

2015 is the year that we set the Sustainable Development Goals and I want to ask you if you’ll do something amazing for me and every girl in the world. 

My dream is to be an educated girl because there is nothing we can enjoy without education. 

I want to see every single girl in the world being educated so we can all achieve our big dreams. This year I finished my primary education at Mlowa School. It’s not been easy, my parents have not always been able to pay for my uniform and textbooks  but I did it and I’m really proud. 

I will do whatever it takes to graduate from any university so that I can achieve my dream to become a police woman and take care of the community. 

It is difficult to study at night because we don’t have power and I can’t go through my notes in darkness. I spend almost the whole day at school without having any meals and it makes me lose my concentration. I am worried that it will affect my performance and I won’t be able to pass my exams - but my father is working extremely hard to find more resources for my studies and I won’t let him down. 

I see many challenges in my village. My family lives off our farm and in the past three years we have not had enough crops due to changes in the local climate. We don’t have a water system in this community so we rely on rivers which go dry for many months sometimes we cannot wash for four days at a time. Some people are benefiting from the government power supply projects in remote areas but there are few and many lack power still. 

I would like to ask what will you and the global leaders will do to ensure that we have better access to clean water and resources and to stop climate change? 

There are also many challenges facing girls. We are not valued and our opinions are not heard. Many girls as young as 13 are being forced to marry and are not allowed to go to school. We are the ones who fetch water and firewood from the forest. I know that I and my fellow girls in Mlowa Village can play great role in implementing the SDGs in this community once empowered and most importantly given the chance. 

I would like to ask you, President Obama, what will you and other global leaders do to make sure that every single girl in my village and in Africa has the chance of a good education so that we can fulfill our dreams and make the world a better place? 

I was born in 2000, the same year the Millennium Development Goals were set. This year, as I turn 15, you and the other global leaders will agree a new plan for a better world. 

Will you help make sure the new development plan leaves no-one out? 

- Eva