Obama Foundation Leaders: A New Generation Pursues Democracy

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CORRESPONDENT: And just to note, we had a conversation just before the news broke that the submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion and all the crew had been lost. Obama is particularly proud of the mentorship that his foundation is providing. And when three of those youth leaders joined us, we heard how those members who are an emerging generation are engaging in the struggle for democracy at this crucial time.

Hager Eissa comes from Sudan. Her country, like Ukraine, is a fledgling democracy which is threatened by war. Hager has worked in refugee camps in Darfur, fostering peaceful reconciliation. And she is founder of the nonprofit organization that helps women of color worldwide.

Summer Keliipio is a consultant in Hawaii, developing leadership skills to strengthen vulnerable populations.

 

And Binette Seck is co-founder of an Ethiopian- based tech training program which has taught thousands of people coding skills. They have all spent this week here in Athens for the culmination of their training program, including a visit to the Home Project, which cares for

children whose lives are wrecked by war and persecution. The leaders talk to us about the moment they were selected.

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BINETTE SECK, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER: But I was in shock. I never had a known anyone that look like me going through this process before.

HAGER EISSA, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER AND FOUNDER, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU QUEENS: I would love to see my community flourishing and having all the

freedom and all the human rights and the women’s rights.

SUMMER KELIIPIO, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER AND OWNER, MO’O STRATEGIES: Sometimes the work that we do is really difficult and it feels quite lonely. But in meeting them, I realize, oh, there are so many of us that go through the same journey.

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AMANPOUR: These Obama Foundation graduates joined our conversation with their perspectives on how collectively to strengthen democracy by forging solutions on threats like climate change, the A.I. upheaval and women’s empowerment.

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AMANPOUR: All right. Mr. President, welcome back, and leaders, Hager, Summer and Binette.

We were talking just before the break about the pervasive misogyny and frankly, physical attacks on women around the world. I just want to first start by asking you, Mr. President, what is the effect on democracy when essentially half the globe’s population is kept down and it still is?

OBAMA: Well, the — you’ve answered your own question. If you’ve got half the population that is being suppressed, often violently, then by definition, democracy is not functioning the way it should. And what is also true is that when women are not empowered, typically they are the ones who are the caregivers, which means that children are not empowered. And the kinds of issues, whether health care or education, you know, kitchen table issues, those are not being attended to. And so, we are depriving ourselves of a set of perspectives that are vital to making democracy work. And, you know, when you look at countries that are successful, they are countries in which women are empowered and countries that are less successful, that stagnate, that are more likely to engage in conflict, and are more violent, are typically once in with women are suppressed.

AMANPOUR: So, there’s a new report that’s just come out in the last several days, the U.N. Gender Index. And it shows that some nine out of 10 people are biased against women in about 80 countries where they surveyed. About half say that men make better leaders, political leaders, men are better business leaders. And a quarter of the respondents say that they accept men beating their wives. I mean, a quarter of the respondents. Let me ask you, Hager, because, you know, you come from Sudan, you are living back and forth in Europe, and you’ve experienced war and refugee status. Tell me how it affects you and in your community building this — you know, oppression of women still?

HAGER EISSA, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER: Well, stepping into that and going back to how Sudan works, especially when it comes to women rights, and Sudan has been facing this massive wave of having this kind of like explaining to women that they cannot do anything, right? Like we have always been told that you cannot vote, who’s going to take your vote. You cannot participate in anything. You are not as equal as men are. So, having all of those challenges that are being faced by women it kind of reshaped half of the women in Sudan into not knowing what kind of leaders they can actually be. So, the power that they actually have in them. And it take — it took us like ages to realize that women are actually strong and they can empower and they are the right to vote, they have the right to have a voice, and they have the right to be respected as well. Stepping into respect, it has always been a challenge for Sudanese women to be respected, especially when it comes to being respected by men, because for them it’s always like, we are the leaders, like we rule the family. It’s only us, nobody else. And for me, especially, I have always been challenged by it. But luckily, I grew up in a family that always taught me that you have the right to do whatever you want as long as you know what you are doing and we trust you enough. So, as my part, I wanted to reflect that in my own way. It took me like a lot of time. I went back to Darfur. We’ve all heard about Darfur.

AMANPOUR: It was a scene of the genocide in the early 2000s.

EISSA: Yes, exactly.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

EISSA: It was massively and so unfortunate. I went back to Darfur. I sat down with families in refugee camps in trying to explain to them the importance of how they should actually like let their girls go to school, right? So, I was the enemy when I started talking about that. They didn’t know that I was actually trying to help. They were like, no, you’re working against culture. So, here, we see how culture is playing a main role in shaping even the community that we are around.

AMANPOUR: You know, we have you three women leaders here. I am sure that the Obama Foundation has some male leaders as well. But here we are, the three women leaders. And I am glad we do, because I want to ask you about what you get from the foundation and what the foundation is designed for in terms of, you know, getting information from each other, sharing experiences, community building.

BINETTE SECK, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER: Just to add one thing that is really key when it comes to the women right issue, it has to do with representation. What do we see represented and — across the board? I think we have an issue of having female leaders that we actually can see ourselves represented in. We have a lack of committees and organizations that are led by women. We also have an issue of networking having a space, a safe space where you can connect with other women or men even. And one of the things that the Obama Foundation and the Obama leadership has given me as a leader is truly the networking, the role models I really needed. Growing up in Tensta, it’s one of the most vulnerable areas in Sweden. And I would sit in a bus, travel from Tensta all the way to Shaista, which is the Silicon Valley of Europe.

Looking out the window, seeing these amazing companies, it’s a tech hub, it’s a tech mecca basically. And sitting in the bus, holding in my hand a device. So, throughout my entire life, as a 14-year-old or as a 25-year- old, I’ve always been connected with technology in my hand. But looking out the window, I made a decision as a young girl, I will never ever get a job in tech.

And the main reason is, if you don’t see yourself represented, what will you become?

AMANPOUR: Yes.

SECK: So, I never saw a woman that looked like myself that was in tech.

AMANPOUR: For you, a fellow Hawaiian, climate must be a huge issue, right? And so many young people vote on climate, and that’s a huge concern for them. What do you think you all can do to move this in a way that will actually make change while governments are still unable to show the full political will?

SUMMER KELIIPIO, OBAMA FOUNDATION LEADER AND OWNER, MO’O STRATEGIES: Such a great question. You know, for me and for all of the other Pacific Islands that are, you know, quickly losing land mass because of climate change, it’s so important, now more than ever, to be able to tell our stories and to reach out to the people around the globe, to our new colleagues in the network and to be able to find opportunities for connecting and helping them to understand what we’re going through on a daily basis. The storms are bigger, the surges are bigger, our reefs are disappearing, the fish are not there, people cannot survive anymore. And so, you know, the leadership and the network provide us an opportunity to get help. And so, what we like to see in the Pacific Islands is, you know, our islands — it’s not a sea of islands but — not islands in the sea, but a sea of islands. And so, we want to make those connections across the globe with everyone else.

AMANPOUR: And are you still hopeful on the climate? Because it’s been said, and we sort of touched on it, that this world, in fact, the head of the IMF told me, this — our world has the technology, has a knowledge, has the money, has the ability. just not the will, essentially, to solve just about every problem that we have. Are you hopeful?

KELIIPIO: Always. Always hopeful. We’re hopeful people, I think. You know, you can’t be in this work and not wake up every day hopeful for the future. You find something else to do, because the problems are so hard. But we look at each other’s eyes and we ask for help and we look for other solutions. And in meeting all of the other leaders we found a family that we didn’t know we were missing, because these are the folks who are going to help to grease the wheels and to make change across sectors and across nations.

OBAMA: Well, and part of — you know, you talk about climate change. So, some of the leaders in our network have led mass movements, you know, including some of the big protests among young people and students in Europe. Some are working to create a conservation corps to prevent deforestation in southeast Asia. And they are working relatively — in relative anonymity, village by village, trying to teach new forestry practices. Some of them are creating clean energy programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, working with villagers to create, you know, easily solar charged batteries and to — or to create networks that can leapfrog old dirty fuel style development and go straight to clean energy development. What happens is when they all talk to each other, they suddenly realize, oh, what I’m doing in Germany is connected to what I’m doing in Vietnam, and actually, it directly connects to what, you know, is happening in Sudan. And then, even across issues, now they suddenly start talking to somebody who is working on migrant — the migrant crisis, and they say, oh, this displacement is in part because people can’t grow food on their land and that’s causing conflict in countries that are then sending people looking for a place to survive. So, we’ve got to deal with that as well. Creating those kinds of networks, exchanges of ideas, that I actually think fuels optimism. We get cynical, we despair when we feel as if we are alone. When we’re together, then suddenly we say to ourselves, oh, maybe we can figure this out. And climate change is an example of something that, yes, it’s not happening as fast as we would like but I constantly remind our young leaders that we’ve actually made enormous progress. When I came in in 2008, during the financial crisis, the entire clean energy industry was about to collapse in the United States. It is now booming. And the cost of clean energy relative to old fossil fuels has evened out because of technological progress, it’s these outstanding leaders who are going to then force us to make even faster progress and then we’ll —

AMANPOUR: And have to clean up our mess, as they —

OBAMA: As usual.

AMANPOUR: Yes. Our kids are going to — you are going to do that. And it is vital work. Can I adjust potentially end with a good discussion on A.I.? You just did a Netflix series on work. And at one point you said, the most work that most Americans do, essentially in service, fairly low paid, it’s not so much a foothold but it’s a treadmill, that they don’t really have a way to get any further. So, that’s one thing. The other thing is, A.I., and how does one convince workers, young leaders, that A.I. can help them and improve the — you know, and enhanced their work opportunities rather than eliminate their work? I don’t know. President Biden is — first — well, first, let me ask you. Are you afraid that A.I. is going to eliminate us as workers, as, you know, some people would say, as a human race?

SECK: I am afraid of the digital illiteracy, not only in Europe but all over the world, especially when we connect that to the first question that you had concerning women and rights. There is no tech industry anymore. It’s within every single industry, whether it is fashion or makeup or production in media, it’s literally everywhere. So, if you zoom out of Sweden, we have 500,000 talents missing in the tech scene. Zoom out further on and look around the globe, there are millions. The latest number was 20 million, but I would say there are millions of people missing in the tech industry. Which often also refers to the need for confidence. And it’s because of the rapid developments that we’ve seen within technology. The rapid development of things that we don’t understand makes us afraid. So, the literacy of technology is crucial. Making sure that the younger generation, the next coming generation, understands that it’s not enough to have competence, to have an education on a high level. What you need to do is continue learning. What is A.I. today might not be A.I. tomorrow.

AMANPOUR: President Biden has been to the West Coast to talk to the A.I. leaders, to talk to them about regulation. And it seems to be commonly agreed, I don’t know whether you agree with this, that it has to be regulated. Do you believe that? And what is your worst nightmare situation if it is not regulated A.I.?

OBAMA: This is a powerful technology and it’s coming fast. And if it kind of goes into the wild, the way social media did without us thinking through the consequences, we’re going to have bigger problems with A.I., we will have bigger problems with A.I. National security problems, job displacement problems, misinformation problems that undermine our democracy. And so, yes, we’re going to have to regulate it in an intelligent way. Now, there is enormous potential. You know, you think about the incredible work that, you know, Hager is doing to try to empower people who have very little access to education. If harnessed correctly, you can have A.I. teachers that much more cheaply are delivering a very good education to people in remote areas. That’s a powerful thing. And by the way, if you have villages where girls have trouble getting to school but you can get them a device and they can learn on their own, that can break down barriers as well. So, that’s the upside. The danger is that if it’s weaponized, it can be a very powerful tool for mischief.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

OBAMA: And so, there’s an entire national security element around this. The job displacement is going to be significant. That is absolutely right, that we need to train our young people to not just the consumers of this technology but to understand and produce and shape how this technology works. But potential for people who are in jobs that can be done remotely to be replaced entirely by machines, I think that is something that’s going to happen fairly quickly. And that means that we’ve got to work more creatively around the sort of things the machines can’t do.

Machines can’t care for each other. Machines can’t, you know, tend to somebody who is ill. They can’t teach with joy a child and inspire them. You know, and a lot of those, by the way, are traditionally women’s work that is undervalued and underpaid, part of what we’re going to have to do is not just regulate the technology but also recognize that we’ve got reshape our society to lift up and reassess what is most valuable in the human experience, and a lot of it is the kinds of work that women do often uncompensated but that makes us — makes life worthwhile.

AMANPOUR: And I guess finally, because we’re out of time, it’s said that, you know, Greece believed — since we’re in Greece, that democracy is only as healthy as the willingness of citizens to engage and to sacrifice, to defend the democracy and to do the work. How do you feel about that? Are enough people of your generation willing to do that, not just, you know, go shopping and me, me, me sort of capitalism? We talked about the capitalism and the inequality, and that’s part of this as well.

EISSA: Well, I believe that’s totally correct. And as also like this program kind proved to me, like how they’re — we are all together as one community willing to actually shape even democracy. I met like a lot of amazing leaders as we’re working in democracy, and I feel I was — at some point, feeling that I was alone, but then seeing this, it made me feel like we’re all in this together.

So, this is actually what I see. And I’m really happy with the results, as this is actually being reshaped and this is — get — we are kind of trying to get the work done in this. So, yes, I totally agree to that.

OBAMA: Summer?

KELIIPIO: The slide to chaos is real, and that’s a real challenge to get people organized and motivated to invest in democratic values is really tough. And at the same time, I think what we saw during the pandemic was once it starts to hit lots and lots of people then I think everybody starts to pay a little bit more attention. And I think, for sure, we’re either at or past that breaking point. And I think more people will start to pay attention to the need to protect, you know, a right to education, a right to prosperity and some degree of peace and security, all of those things we need in order to survive as a people, as human people. And that will — that, I think, will fuel motivation to make progress towards these democratic values.

SECK: What I’m really looking forward to is the next coming generation that are informed, empowered, engaged. And I think one of the ways is to build communities where you can find your safe space, you have someone to look up to where you can grow in your network, you can go past the knowledge and build your competence in order to really believe that you’re worthy of a better life. Because once you do believe that, we have seen, in our organizations, that’s when you create a better life for someone else.

AMANPOUR: Brilliant.

OBAMA: And one last thing I’ll say about young people and democracy, and I mentioned this, I think, in one of the meetings we had with the group, in almost every country, young people vote at lower levels than older people. And it’s understandable. They’re worrying about careers, school, getting a job, romance, starting families. So, there are a lot of distractions. And democracy can seem like an — some abstraction that they don’t have time to worry about. But what I’ve increasingly seen is that young people recognize the existing institutions are working for them.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

OBAMA: It is our job, yours, mine. I’m much older than you, Christiane, but it is our job to give the opportunity for young people, because it turns out that when you are willing to cede some power, when you are willing to say, all right, what ideas do you have? Let’s put you in charge of this. How would you reorganize this? They will seize that opportunity.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

OBAMA: And I think part of the message that we have in the foundation is it is time for us to pass that baton, to pass that torch. They’re ready to run the race, and they’re already running it. Sometimes it’s — you know, old heads like me that are getting in the way. But I’m confident and hopeful that you guys are going to clean up our mess, as you put it.

AMANPOUR: Well, listen, thank you all so much. Binette, Summer, Hager and President Obama, thank you very much for being with us.

OBAMA: Thanks so much for taking the time.

EISSA: Thank you for having us.

SECK: Thank you.

KELIIPIO: Thank you.

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