 Thank you very much Rajiv and Iklif for inviting me here. It's really hard to follow and act by Francois Pinier. You know, one of the things people don't know about me is I'm not a sportswoman, as you know. But the only game I would stay up in the middle of the night to watch is rugby. The other thing is that there are very few people who inspire me. But the one person who has made me go on the streets to march is Nelson Mandela. At the time I was in the UK and they had a free Nelson Mandela watch and we had to march on the streets of Glasgow and so I did. So to be now in the presence of people like Francois and all the distinguished speakers is such a daunting task for me now to speak to you. And the other thing that happened recently in New York is I actually had an audience with Matt Damon. So this is almost like a bit of an overdose right now. He was in the hall, he was speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative and he's just such a decent human being doing work with water.org. So in the shadows of these great people, Mandela, Francois and other people who've done such great work in this world, I'm here really to share my story and why I'm what I am and what I'm doing. Now I was born with a gift of diversity. It's in my genes to want diversity in my entire life. I come from mixed parentage. My father was a typical Johor civil servant and my mother was a Chinese woman who had a very interesting background. Now my mother, my grandfather came from Fujian, met my grandmother, a Nyonya Chinese in Penang, married her, had five children and like every good Chinese sailor, abandoned his wife and children and went back to China. So my grandmother had to come down from Penang with her children and she had four girls and the youngest was a boy, my mother was the youngest girl, and put three of the elder girls into convent in Suramban, convent Holy Infant Jesus, and my mother and her little brother were then living in the back room of a rich relative helping with errands and trying to go to school, washing bottles in the FNN factory after school. My mother fell in love with a British soldier and married him and then the British wouldn't recognize the marriage at the time because she was Chinese and all Chinese are communists, if you didn't know that. So she had her little daughter and my sister who then had to come back all the way to Suramban and she had to give up her daughter to the husband because he was worried that she could take care of her on the promise that she would go to England to study, but of course she was kept in Singapore without my mother knowing till her daughter was 18. My father on the other hand was, as I said, a typical Malay civil servant who would get up in the morning, take his walks, have a lovely wife, a muah, muah for those who know, and had a daughter and then adopted three abandoned Chinese girls. So I think there must be some affinity to Chinese people here in my family. So he had four daughters then and his wife died and he met my mum, they fell in love and they married. So I have a mother who is born Buddhist became a Christian and became a Muslim. I have a father who only knew Islam, very conservative kind of, you know, normal life kind of human being, but who embraced my mother's life and made sure we all respected it. So we were brought up loving diversity, celebrating the roots of my mother and her journey, a very painful journey actually, and therefore in our family there's a lot of intermarriage and we're like a little mini United Nations so you can imagine a lot of conflict. And I think because I'm the youngest in the family of an extended family, we are 13, being the youngest you're able to observe these things and try to figure out, you know, you can't have a louder voice because you're drowned at 13. So one of the things my mother used to say to me, if you can't shout out, you need to know how to negotiate. So my father was really wonderful, really, really wonderful man. One of the things he loved most and inculcated in me was reading. So we would read together and do everything together and I was born when he had retired. Now those days retirement age was 50 or 51. So my mother was also older. I always tell my mother, oh my goodness, you don't know how risky it was for you to have a pregnancy at that age, you know? You could have gone wrong. So anyway, to cut the long story short, so he would wait for me in school and we would go, I was in Asunta school, Tansui Zeti and I shared the same alma mater, like all good convent girls. We are taught to be decent human beings first and then be very smart scholars later on. But some of us managed to try and achieve a little bit of both. So anyway, just talking about my father, because it's really important, because that's a bit of my history, is that in standard one, he would wait outside my class and every time I turned around, if he wasn't there, I would scream. But the bottom line is I am extremely spoiled. I had everything done for me when I was young because I was much loved. My father died when I was 11. I watched my father die very slowly from cancer. My mother, who was spending most of her time in the kitchen then, had to go to work. So my father said, do what you think you want to do. And she said, I want to go into shipping. So there's some insanity gene in my family. So from a housewife, she decided she wanted to do shipping. And my father said, fine. And my early memories, even when he was ill, was us driving. He had an MGBGT and driving to Port Clang and he would sit on the edge of the wharf with a tiffin carrier waiting for my mother. And he and I, my mom would eat and she would work, directing labourers and all this kind of stuff. And when he died, she was very young, she was 40 something, she was very beautiful. When she died, she had 450 staff and in a fairly successful corporation. So I think growing up in that environment where home was also like a little refugee camp. In the evenings, we lived in Jalan Gasing in PGA and at home in the evenings, the furniture would be pushed aside and mattresses would be rolled out and people would come and sleep in our house. I had no idea who they are. Some of them are actually relatives of very successful people who were having a hard time. But my father and mother would buy rice by the sacks and feed everyone and it was always someone looking for a job, someone who had lost a job, a relative who's come here who needs help or non-relative. When May 13, 1969 happened, my father who did marketing would know everybody in the market from the fishmonger, the vegetable seller, the chicken seller. So when May 13 happened, the marketers would come during the non-curfew hours and send food stuff to our house. So we would then be a little bit of a distribution channel. Because I was little then, I was very young and my brother and I, because we were short and small, we could go into the monsoon drains that became a supply chain. So we would actually go around the neighbourhood and send eggs, rice, flour, sugar, whatever. I grew up in that environment and so when my brother blessed him, he turns around to me, he says, are you out of your mind? You're one of the most successful obstetricians and gynecologists and you're doing this. And I looked at him and I said, are you out of your mind? Look at how we grew up. So when I started my career in medicine, I chose obstetrics and gynecology because I'm actually much more comfortable with women and I hope next year there'll be 50% women on stage and I will help you find the 50% because they're much better women than me. But I loved my job. I've delivered about 14,000 babies in my life. I bet some of you in here have some relationship with me, somehow or other. I've never been to a place where nobody has come up to me to say, oh, you delivered my daughter or my sister's child or whatever. And then it was teaching first. I love teaching. So I used to teach in University of Kibasa, Malaysia and so forth and then I went into private practice and it was fantastic. Your own clinic, your own setup, your own thing. My husband's also a gynecologist and obstetrician. But one of the best things I did was I married well. My husband's not here today because he has to work but he always tells people, they come to him and they say, your wife is so successful. So what's the secret? So he says, you know, the saying behind every successful man, there's a very strong woman. Behind every successful woman, there's a suffering man. So he has a great sense of humor but most of all, I've never met anyone who loves me and is so proud of me than my husband. So I owe much of whatever my success is to him as well. So Rewind, 1998. In Malaysia, the career path of a doctor is a very restricted one. So I don't understand why everybody wants their children to be doctors. I seriously don't understand and we can have a conversation about that. You go to medical school, you graduate, you work, you have to do compulsory service. Sometimes you continue in government, you become lecturer, you become professor, you become a top consultant. You become private petitioner or you become GP. You don't have space to take a year off and do something that you like. Because if you do that, then you fall back in terms of your promotion and things. It's very different from the West where you can take a gap year, you can do all sorts of things and try and exploit things that you like. I did medicine because I really liked working with people and I really wanted to help people. So in 1998, I didn't remember the Bosnia crisis and all that. I was like, I want to help. I can't go, university wouldn't let me go and all that kind of stuff. So when I was in private practice, I decided ah, I can go now because if I don't come to work, the only thing that happens is I have no money. But I don't have a boss. I don't have to say can I take leave because actually I should have. I broke all the rules but it was more of an independent time. And then I was watching television and it was Kosovo at the time. I was with my five-year-old kid, my son who regrets it till this day what he said to me. And I looked at it and I said, television, I said look at these children. Look at them, they're so hungry and they think things that mothers do to make their children feel guilty. Look at them, you can't waste food and you have to study hard and all that. And you know, look at these people and he turned around to me and he said, don't just say it, mommy. You're a doctor, go and do something. So I said, oh, hang on a minute, this is them from my five-year-old, kind of scary. So I went to my husband and I said, he's right, you know, I want to do these things. I want to do these things. He said okay, okay, go and do these things. So I wrote to everyone. I wrote to every organization in Malaysia to tell you, not one single person replied. Not one single organization replied. Everyone must have thought this mad woman probably very unhappy in marriage wants to go away, you know. So anyway, nobody replied. So I said okay, nobody replied. So I wrote to medicine's home frontier. No Nobel winning organization. Doctors without borders. So sexy. And I applied and I said, they said come, we'll do an interview with you on telephone and we'll see what we can do. I said, I'm going to go, my husband looked at me and he said, you know, why do you want to do this? I said, I want to do this because Malaysia cannot measure development by these tall buildings and the highways. We cannot call ourselves stewards on the earth if we don't care about people. Global solidarity is everyone's responsibility. I'm a human first and then I'm a Malaysian. We all have to feel compassion. Otherwise, why do we study so hard to be soulless? Why did I become a doctor to only make money? So he said, okay, I hear you. But if you join medicine's home frontier, you're just one Malaysian in an international organization. Why don't you set up an organization and build a platform for Malaysians to do good? Be a symbol that you can as a woman, as a Muslim, as a Malaysian to make your mark in this national arena. The moral of the story, ladies and gentlemen, is I'm just a very obedient Muslim wife. My husband says, set up an organization. I set up an organization. You know, so so I did. Now in Malaysia for those who are always complaining about registrar societies, let me tell you the inside. To be a Malaysian organization, you need to have seven signatories from seven board members, founding board members from seven states. I'm born in the Gris Milan by accident. Seriously by accident. It's a long story. That my husband is born in Pahang. So two. So I knocked on my neighbor's house. Hey, where were you born? Meleka. The other one, Klantan. Went to the office the next day. I did surgery. My anesthetist, Dr. Ui. Ui, where are you born? Kedah, wow, six, five. The surgeon next door, where are you born? Sabah, six, one more, one more, one more. And then I said to my niece, why don't you join me and help me? She said, okay, slango. So we had seven names. The only constitution I had, at that time not very clever. Now also not so clever. But I didn't have lawyer friends. That's a problem. So I just looked at one thing that was on my table, which was the Malaysian Menopause Society. I am the founding vice president of the Malaysian Menopause Society. At the time where women who had menopause didn't know what was going on with them, going bonkers, it's serious. And the men were coming and saying, my wife wanted to kill me last week. But we formed the Malaysian Menopause Society in my prof and I. So I translated every word that had menopause into humanitarian. What the what the constitution looked like. Absolutely crazy, right? And submitted it to the registrar of societies. But as I submitted it, I picked up the phone and I spoke to the man on the other line. I said, what's your name? This is Mr. Jaya. Mr. Jaya, are you don't know me? I don't know you. Are you Hindu? He says, yes, I'm Hindu. Practicing? Yeah, yeah. Vegetarian all? Yeah, yeah. Right, in Hinduism is bad, right? To kill and do things that are bad to people. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to set this up, Mr. Jaya. You must help me. And I said, I don't know how to write this constitution. I tried. Can you help me? It's okay, okay. I had this man who I never met in my life, only on the phone, handwritten in red ink every correction on the ROS form. The normal time after society in Malaysia then was six months. I got my registration in two months. Okay? The moral of the story there is that you need to trust that if you're doing something good, there are other people out there who will help you. So I refuse to believe that there's evil more than good. But it's about connecting the dots and putting it out there and then it will come back to you. So the rest is history. We started the organization when we started. Everyone who wanted to go on mission had to pay the airfare. Not only you go to war zone, you have to pay to go to the war zone. But the leader is not a leader unless he has followers. He or she has followers, right? So I put it out there. Who wants to go to Kosovo with me? Believe it or not, people wanted to come. And I was looking at these people coming to sign up and I was like, are they as insane as I am? They don't even know me. Some I met in Bangsa, McDonald's, you know. I mean just to recruit people. And one professor from UM said, I'm going to be in Edinburgh as an examiner. I will join you in Rome and I will cross into Kosovo. And this is a serious war zone, right? But that was how we started. Really, full of passion, not a lot of money. But I took out all my taboom haji money from my savings. I thought God would understand. And I said, well this is my contribution and the rest is history of course. We grew the organisation from just a few people, no staff to an organisation by the time I left in 2009 that had about 50 staff in Malaysia about 5,000 volunteers and worked in about 20 countries. Now going into the humanitarian field it's not about being a goodie-goody. It's about being a really you have to really think strategically. You get into areas where life is not usual and it's business unusual. The quotes from Nelson Mandela that really touched my heart and was guiding lights for me also was that a good leader doesn't stand in front when there's a victory but it's about being in front when there's danger. So I would tell the team, guys I know this is difficult but I'm with you I will be there I will be in front of you and I will help you and if there's any risk I take it first. So the other question that people ask my husband how come you don't go with your wife to which he says you know ladies first So that's the story, well he did I'll tell you the story because it's important he came with me on the one mission to Afghanistan At the time the Taliban was in rule and I was very concerned about health for women and he said I think I better go with you they ask you why are you in this team all these men at least one relative I'll go with you he was so scared I think after that he never I think one person must think in case anything happens So anyway and you can imagine Afghanistan under the Taliban rule 2001 and going in and they're saying who's the leader and then you know everybody looked at me it's just we don't see you're the leader you know it's difficult we see you're the leader they say how come women leading you what kind of people are you and then I said okay so my husband went with a couple of men to meet some of the commanders and they said who's the leader and he actually said she's a woman to which I think you know there was some special expressions that are probably quite scary but he said but I know her really well and if you if you confront her she might not be very nice to you so I had to confront I had to confront the commander and you know and I looked at the guy and smiled some of them are actually highly educated so when we started talking and they were kind of like what the hell are you here we were surprised because who are you from Malaysia everybody knows even Taliban so so it was like then you know being Malaysian is so special I mean people don't realize this I go to Africa anywhere in the world I say I'm Malaysian the barrier kind of falls something about being Malaysian I think we are just a non threat to the rest of the world that's why so anyway to cut the long story short dealing with them I had to play a bit of so I looked at him and I said look what's the worst that can happen I told her I went to see the commander and I said you and I read the same books you and I share the same faith we may have very different ways of expressing our faith if you kill me you know what I might go to heaven but you will not taste heaven and I think they didn't expect me to say that but what ensued was nine acres of land to actually work they said we won't disturb you do your work but be careful don't touch your women being a woman meant I could get access I could go into people's homes and talk to their women when you can talk to the women no matter how tough you are the wife will convince you what is right so we would talk to the women and say please tell your husband don't be so hard on us we want health care for women and so forth because women in Afghanistan were dying by the flies Afghanistan had the highest maternal mortality rate only one in five children would live to see their fifth birthday so I was so focused on trying to get health care into Afghanistan so we established a health center and so forth and we actually established one in Kandahar as my American friend said to me gosh you're real crazy going to Afghanistan is one thing setting up in Kandahar are you mad what were you on weed so Kandahar is like the hot seat of everything bad but we established it and even now as I have left it's still there it's still providing health care to women and children and we've never been disturbed never once have we been threatened by anyone and it's all run by local staff so I think one of the things I learned is that yes you take calculated risks but you build a network that protects you so going to Afghanistan is one thing but drinking tea with every tribal leader or one person connected to any tribe between Kweta to Kandahar is essential when we were in Darfur working in Darfur is pretty scary because the desert is large and vast and buildings are not close to each other so the UN would tell us you know we have a security tree so we have the security tree where to go but you know if you're an NGO you don't stay in the same compound as the UN especially if you're non-west in the NGO so you stay a bit further out and I looked at it and I said how are we going to get to the compound when the fighting starts because it does take time so with the team we said what's our security tree so we said what are the three most important people in this community the Imam the teacher the midwife let's talk to them so we talked to the Imam and so forth gave him tea and everything and we said I have my team here they're all not Muslim they're mixed organizations so I said we have to protect my staff otherwise how are we going to to work here and get healthcare to your women I said okay we'll come back in three days time they come back in three days time with lamb briani everything they come to us and they say okay when this fighting happens here you run here this guy will take you here this guy will take you here through the village so our security tree was actually much safer than a probably a UN security tree because it had the community taking care of us that's the difference but in 2003 before the bombing in in Iraq we did our mission and we assured the Iraqi government that the health facilities that should they need us we will be there some of you may know April 12th 2013 I got shot in Iraq I was in a convoy with two ambulances a team and we were in one hospital working delivering supplies and the pharmacist came to me and said you need to go to the children's hospital these people are being sewn by needle and thread there you need to go so we said okay we have our supplies is it safe is this route safe and he said I go on this route three times a day so we asked some of the people around we had a security advisor and he said what do you think should be fine two convoy two ambulances let's go sometimes with all the calculations you do on risk there's always the the black swan right what happened was hours before we were moving on the road Saddam and his people opened up their weapons cache and people were just taking guns and bullets you could buy bullets for 50 cents a pack and they started to do a little shooting across the streets and we happened to be the ambulances trying to get from one hospital to another that for some reason people started to shoot it was a mob psychology young people with guns just shooting across each other who later on by the way came back gave us cake and all these guys after killing two of my stuff they killed my driver and the pharmacist who actually told me it was safe sometimes intuition is strange as I was crossing the border I had an intuition the night before that I would not come back I called my husband and I said I've transferred all the shares to you you know I have a bad feeling but I'm still an obedient Muslim wife and I said if you tell me I can't go I won't go and he said don't be silly this is your destiny whatever you do I'm going to get reward because I can't do the things that you do so the one thing I said to him if I die I left a list of women who you might want to consider marrying because some of them are my friends they like the kids so marry well I don't want my children to be badly treated by some horrible stepmother so please make sure he always says to me don't need to wait till you die you give me the why don't you give me this list earlier so we always joke because there's all sorts of rumors you know I'm unhappy my husband had four wives and he wishes but anyway so to cut the long story short so I went and had very strange intuition and my colleague Dr. Baba who was with me I turned to him and I said I don't have a good feeling he says I don't have a good feeling too I said do you want to stay in the hotel and not go he says no I also called my wife and I told her that I need to do this and all so he's fine the driver came to me and he said I'm so scared doctor I said I know you're scared if you're scared we abandon because if you can't drive we're in trouble you know the roads and everything and he came back to me in the morning he says you know what I'm okay this is what I'm going to do this is my service he said there was gaffur and he said I will drive you I will drive the ambulance and it's a very sad story but I will tell you that in 2003 I went for Hajj and I did my Hajj 2003 to a company to do for Yasmin Yasmin Ahmad who passed away she wanted me to go for Hajj so I took her and I bought a cheap Casio watch once you get in Mecca I had the same watch as I did so he said to me remember the watch, we have the same watch so when we were driving and everybody was being shot left and right for some reason too we decided to switch places on the van so Baba moved to the outside I usually like the fan the wind so I will sit on the side so he got the worst of it the bullet went through him went through a reader's digest book and into my left hip I joke about it but seriously you need a little padding to stop bullets so it's okay to be a bit padded but anyway but Baba was very badly hit he was beating, he was unwell he was unconscious and everything happened in just minutes the guy, the pharmacist actually took a bullet straight into his chest and I tried to resuscitate him he died it's funny what you remember but I remember most people trying to take my shoes because the children and all that started pointing to me and I thought oh my god I peed in my pants because it was warm in my pants so I said oh this is embarrassing then I kind of put my finger there and I said oh there's a hole in my left hip hang on a minute but people saw me and said lie down they wanted to take my shoes and I was like no, don't take my shoes they were like kick us so anyway so we went to the hospital and Baba was there trying to get him stabilized and I had to deal with the hole the first guy I met I just grabbed him and said hold my pants down and he was like I think he was more shocked than me I had to hold my pants down I put the stitch in and I said now pull so just keep the bleeding but let's deal with Baba the only hospital we could take him in was deeper and deeper into the terrible territory but he had operating theatre blood bank and all that so he took him into surgery all this while I thought I was really really calm but the minute he was on the operating theatre and he was done that's when I broke down and cried because the relief you feel that at least you managed to help your colleague out of this trouble and I felt so angry so guilty what a fool I was did I endanger my entire team I'm stupid I'm reckless what am I doing here and all these things come into your head but then you live through the security in your head I did this I did this I talked to Central Command I talked to Americans I talked to everybody they knew we were on this thing we had a white flag we had this and everything was correct but still we were shot and then the door knocked on my door many of the doctors had fled the hospital and the junior doctor and the nurse comes in and she said we have a problem I said what there's a woman who's just come in very heavily pregnant she's had three previous caesareans she has a hemoglobin of six which is very anemic we have one pint of blood we need a good surgeon the only surgeon now in the hospital so I hobbled over told my colleagues put a box there because I couldn't stand straight so I said just hold my back we'll do the surgery got the baby boy out everything went well and I said to the nurse I'll come back and see her six seven hours I'll come and walk as I walk back to my room in the hospital bullets were flying over the horrible, horrible feeling and then I came back six seven hours later and she was sitting in bed holding her clothes and I like this is not the patient I no, no this is not the woman that I've just done surgery in Malaysia my god they've been lying flat for three days patients are so pampered here so they said no she's the one so I looked at her and I said why what are you doing and she said to me if the bullets or rather the bombs drop on my home tonight I want to be with my children and I said you know who am I complaining about this bullet in my hip it must be a reason why I'm here you know we can't fight our destiny sometimes we try to avoid it but you know it happens right there must be a reason that I'm there and it was easy then to come back and say give up I don't want to do this anymore I put my friends' lives in danger then I thought about it and a lot of psychotherapy talking to people and so on so forth one of the things I did was go to the UN and say we are no longer sacrosanct the humanitarian arena is now a dangerous arena because of the invasion of many of the troops into many of the countries people now cannot distinguish who want to help us and people who want to kill us so it has unfortunately blurred lines and even though you know it's just so tragic but the humanitarian arena is no longer sacrosanct one month later Margaret Hassan who is a good friend not one month sorry one month later the Red Cross ICRC facility in Baghdad was bombed Margaret Hassan who had worked her entire life she's Irish, she's from care who children on the street called Mama Margaret was killed and then the UN canal hotel was bombed killing some of the top brains in the humanitarian and development sector and then I realised that if I gave up I would not be doing any justice to the people who lost their lives in the service of others what I needed to do is make the organisation strong the tsunami happened you must know that Mercy Malaysia was raised on the contributions of my patients and Malaysians they have no foreign funding corporations, public funding a man from Ipoh who would drive down and go up the stairs you know Sharon will remember that she's in the crowd you know to give us a hundred dollars children with Down syndrome in Johor who would wash cars and give us money children boarding schools in Trenganu who would fast for a week and give us all their meal money for lunch I think the generosity we got was beautiful money so when the tsunami happened we had very little money left in the bank we were not a huge organisation but I remember that meeting saying no one's gone to Aceh yet this epicentre is there all the news we're getting is Phuket in Sri Lanka something bad is happening there we need to go they said how do you get in there it's a war zone people don't realise this Aceh was a war zone so we said let's try let's go let's empty everything out if we go out we go out in style man we do this after this Mercy Malaysia close us down we've done our best we're not here to prove anything so we did the rest is history when CNN came Dr Leon and everybody then started hey these guys are pretty serious they went to a war zone and of course I started getting phone calls now in Malaysia there's some iconic leaders in the business world one of them is Hasan Marikan and people used to tell me oh Hasan Marikan doesn't like talking to people doesn't like talking to NGOs my phone rang in Aceh and it was Hasan Marikan I swear I was sitting on the thing I stood up and he said how much do you need I said what do you mean how much do I need how much money do you need and I said I don't want your money he's like what I said I don't want your money because I don't know I need to do a proper assessment what's needed before I tell you a figure I can't tell you I need 10 million when I maybe need two I wouldn't be honest I need to do a proper assessment then I would tell you okay never mind I give you one million first it's okay so I took it and then other people Kazan other corporations pricewaterhouse all these people came to me and said what do you need and I said I need my organization to outlive me I need help I need good corporate governance I need a solid organization processes SOPs everything after you will do all that for me I tell you how much I need so they got the best brains pricewaterhouse hey group Accenture you name it everybody came to help us pro bono you know had a proper charter and everything we took our organization through being the first organization in Asia to be certified for humanitarian accountability so so it was this commitment right and then you know of course after that I turn around now I tell you how much I need I need this amount of millions to run my organization professionally if you give me this then whatever I raised from the public will be for the people so maybe it was a good day but for some reason they agreed but what was even more clever was I pegged the dollar at 3.8 because I quoted them in US dollars and I said I need this million for my operations at 3.8 and of course a couple of months later it was unpegged so Tanji Azman always says you know this one she fooled me she actually you know how can I as a corporation this NGO person got me to actually pegged the dollar and paid the rest is history but they've become huge supporters so the organization became much more professional then and then we were much more in the international arena we decided to play with the big boys we went into international meetings I was on several boards internationally I was on the board of Save the Children I was the vice chair of international council all this stuff and so this little dream that I had to build a platform for Malaysians to do good the little dream that humanitarianism is as much about good management and good governance and running a corporation the same way but most importantly bringing people from all walks of life who would actually put their lives on the line for something they believed in we had a common ambition a common goal is easy to look at us and think you know what they've done so much for these people who needed the help it's wrong we have learned so much in this journey when I was in Aceh I met a little girl her name was Ofa if I have you know I'm going to get Muslim leisure to give each of you a copy of our book that I wrote during my time I will remember that Raji more she was actually being breastfed and she was swept by the waves and her mother died so only she and her sister survived and her husband her father but the children were young but yet every time we came to the camp you're talking about seven year olds they were actually rushing to their tent and pour glass of water and run to you have a drink to sit down share whatever half banana they had you know when I went to places like Pakistan I was there for Eid feeling very sorry for myself alone in the mountain top with the border of Kashmir India and Pakistan and you know children would come up and feed you sweet rice you would see people in Kosovo who didn't have much food baking bread so that every household didn't have a loaf for each of us and you know it was this beauty of people realizing that you know they wanted to be part and parcel of our work and how much we've learned from them about dignity about courage about resilience I say to people and we talk about innovation everybody's talking about innovation innovation big word now but innovation you see at village level when everything is lost innovation you see when people have to get on with life with very little is something that we need to learn from because then you can scale it up because it's the concepts of how you take very little and make it much more I tell the story about there's a little coffee shop in Aceh that emerged and we like who gave them this name was Mercy Coffee Shop so I walked in and I said what is up and they said well when you guys came and you gave us rice and all this kind of sound volunteers gave money and all this kind of stuff so we decided that we have to have something sustainable so we opened this little tent coffee shop but they had a karaoke machine and a television so they said we come here we talk to each other we debrief we are all affected by the tsunami we sing and then I said okay we'll also use the microphone to give information about the preparedness about educating them about hygiene and things like that so let's use the innovation they've created to further innovate so I can't think about these things it has to be people affected by crisis who themselves are leaders we always forget that we always forget that the people we help are also leaders and we can learn from them and I think the whole concept of humanitarianism is about respecting affected people so I left in 2009 because it was never about me it was about creating an organization for Malaysians to come together and make a difference in the world it was so easy to leave I have no role with the organization now but I know that we've planted a very strong seed so right now I have a bigger challenge I am in the United Nations in New York heading what is the World Humanitarian Summit which is the first ever World Humanitarian Summit why? because 10 years ago we were dealing with 30 million people who needed help now we deal with 100 million in 2003 and 2014 the needs in terms of financial needs to serve the needs of people is up by 430% the way the UN system does business is no longer sustainable what we need to do is bring in new ideas private sector, diaspora affected people putting more responsibility and ownership on governments so basically I've been hired to be a disruptor it's a difficult job because everyone is your enemy for many UN agencies it's like oh my gosh it's going to change things a lot of the international organizations will the money flow other places for governments it's suspicion, what are they trying to do here but we managed to corral a really really great team now and communicate it very strongly that this is about change the world has changed and so must humanitarian action this dish it out is going to revolutionize the world because right now it's no longer about sending rice and beans and stuff it's about sending a barcode to affected people so then they can stimulate markets and buy things now you can get education through internet I always talk about Somalia one of the most dangerous places in the world what are the three things you can get anywhere in Somalia cut, which they chew and they're high most of the time anywhere and mobile phones there are 11 telcos in Somalia I don't think there are 11 in New York and certainly the coverage is better if you live in New York you understand what I mean it's always drop calls so the world has changed so we now need to engage people like you in the room, people who will make a difference because you have the knowledge and we need to more than ever live in a networked age where every one of us no matter what the profession must believe in the sense of possibility must believe that we must leave the world a better place must believe that no matter how evil it is right now there are good people too and I think at every individual level if we can do one single thing each day I love your paid forward by the way we have to do it and you know Nasser Mandela said if you speak in a language if you speak in a language they understand they will listen with their head if you speak in a language they use they listen with their heart and that is not just the metaphorical language about other things communication so I think we all need to learn to speak better to each other so that's my little journey I think I certainly am not the most courageous person in the world I am nervous and I'm scared sometimes but overcoming fear is important but always seeing that you are just one little part of the bigger equation and to surround yourself with people friends, mentors, coaches who will tell you things you don't want to hear is the important thing so I've been very blessed that I've been surrounded by people who always wanted to tell me how to do it well even though it hurt me even though there are challenges and failures along the way but what choice do we have we have to believe the sense of possibility because we owe it to our kids we owe it to the future generations who would judge us for our sense of not wanting to see the sense of possibility thank you very much ladies and gentlemen