Tererai Trent
Wrote her dreams on paper, buried them in a tin, and dug them up decades later
Tererai Trent grew up in a poor farming family in rural Zimbabwe, where her brothers were sent to school and she was not. She taught herself to read using her brother's old lessons, was married at eleven, and had four children by her late teens while her husband opposed her studying at all. Encouraged by an aid worker from Heifer International, she wrote her ambitions on paper, buried the paper in a tin under a rock, and left for the United States with almost nothing, working multiple jobs while raising her children and studying part-time.
She earned a bachelor's, master's and eventually a doctorate from Western Michigan University, becoming the first person from her village known to hold one. In 2009 she told her story on The Oprah Winfrey Show; Winfrey later called her the programme's all-time favourite guest and donated 1.5 million dollars toward building a school in Trent's home village, later followed by clean water and further education projects delivered through the foundation Trent established.
She has since worked as an academic and public speaker on girls' education and rural development, returning often to Zimbabwe to expand the schools and water systems her donation started, and to argue that no girl's ambitions should have to be buried in a tin to survive.