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Everything has to do with education: If you educate the girls, you educate the family, the community, and society, in general.

I have seen the transformative effect that education has in the lives of young women and their communities.

At any rate, girls are differently situated. Having no need of deep scientific knowledge, their education is confined more to the ordinary things of the world, the study of the fine arts, and of the manners and dispositions of people.

Education does loads of things for girls that won't surprise you at all - it provides self-esteem, teaches important life skills, and offers the kinds of choices a good education can give anyone.

There is a reason you keep hearing about the power of educating girls in the developing world. It's a reason so simple that you will probably view it with suspicion, as I once did. It's this: educating girls works. Really works.

Education, doing homework, is the way to lift up girls. Around the world, where girls are educated, the economy and the standard of living rise.

I believe that it is girls' human rights to go to school to be educated, minimum, until they are 18.

Those 62 million girls who are not being educated around the world impact my life in Washington, D.C., in the United States of America. Because if we aren't empowering and providing the skills and the resources to half of our population, then we're not realizing our full potential as a society, as mankind.

When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.

Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights.