Who: Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair, The Clinton Foundation
On the Ground: Last August, Chelsea Clinton, 34, sat in a circle of women in Malawi and talked about, of all things, legumes. She'd traveled there to help the women with their businesses, but her conversations with the women helped inspire something larger.
The Big Picture: The Clinton Foundation's No Ceilings campaign to promote gender equality collects and uses data to persuade governments and institutions to change discriminatory policies. "The goal," Clinton says, "is to ask: If women and girls were equal participants culturally, politically, socially, what would their countries look like?"
Proof Positive: Because of the campaign's work, the Malawian women now have greater access to high-quality groundnut seeds, a cash crop. And so, although the women were literally talking about farming, they were really talking about their dreams—about feeding their families and building roofs for their homes; about sending their kids to school instead of putting them to work; about being able, for the first time in generations, to imagine better lives for their daughters and granddaughters.
Credo: "Investing in women and girls isn't just the right thing to do," says Clinton, who is now bringing similar programs to Tanzania and Myanmar. "It's the smart thing."
Get Involved: clintonfoundation.org or donate here
Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World
Photo Credit: Dever Post via Getty Images
