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 was desperate to go back to New York and when 9/11 happened, I feared moving to the bulls-eye and that was very hard because I have a lot of family there and I really had to question what I didn't like about this community.

I'm incredibly sad that my mother's not here to see my kids and that my kids don't get to know her. And she didn't meet my husband. That's one of the hardest things. I don't even know how to put that into words.

I always used to get in trouble for talking too much. When it was time for parent-teacher conferences, I remember that I was always embarrassed about what my parents would hear about me!

We go to college, live together or marry, and have kids - often with little more thought to the daily routines of raising children than our grandparents gave them, when women by and large stayed at home.