Never take your eye off the ball. Always remember that you and everyone on the team is the servant of the cause - in our case, girls' education and young women's leadership in Africa.

For the poor, learning to manage money well is central to improving their lives.

For more than 20 years, Camfed has supported a generation of African girls and women with access to secondary and higher education, employment opportunities, and, ultimately, into positions of leadership.

When I first worked in Zimbabwe, I was a complete novice. I was doing a study, and I continued to learn more and more through the years. And where I have learned most is in the village, from the communities.

I ain't got much education, but I got some sense.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

You go and find work wherever it is, and you learn from it. No matter what the experience is, you can always file something away as knowledge.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.