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Laura Bush Meets Girls without Borders

My name is Astha Kapoor. I work with Girls without Borders (GwB) and had the opportunity to meet Laura Bush, the First Lady of United States of America, on June 21st, 2006 in Vienna, Austria. In this meeting I represented Girls without Borders and I would like to share my experience with you.

After a series of presentations in front of a variety of people, Women without Borders (WwB- our mother organisation) was selected to make a presentation about its work and aims in front of Mrs Bush. After many discussions it was decided that only five people from WwB could go for the presentation. Dr. Edit Schlaffer, our chairwoman, would of course attend; Elisabeth, our office manager, who was to talk about WwB projects in India; Georgina, who would describe the Rwandan program for Hutu and Tutsi girls that Women Without Borders initiated; Kate, the American face to WwB and myself. I was surprised that I was picked, but Edit said that this was a great platform for me to talk about the concerns of girls across the world. That was the end of my teenage skepticism.

After deciding what to wear ( always a priority!), I began working on my speech. Well... lets not go so far as to call it a speech. We were all given only two minutes. We rarely realize the value of two minutes. To fit everything I had to say in those horribly precious two minutes was extrememly difficult. But after 15 drafts I managed. The night before the big day, in the middle of all the chaos created by  helicopters flying low over our house and all the police cars blasting their sirens, everyone approved of my speech and this boosted my confidence. But nothing could take the sinking feeling away. No amount of '' Astha you' ll be ok '' calmed me down. I was a wreck. I couldn't sleep. The meeting was at 10 o'clock but we were asked to go to the hotel about 2 hours early for security reasons. Apart from the nervousness regarding my speech, getting dressed in my traditional Indian sari turned out to be quite a bother as well. I was tripping and running in circles with 5 metres of extremely delicate cloth, but in the end I somehow succeeded. So then we began the long walk to see the first lady. The entire city had been blocked off. Traffic was being regulated. It's not everyday that the the American president decides to come to Austria. In fact George Bush is the first American president to visit Austria in 27 years. But at 7 o'clock in the morning, we were the only people around. After we reached the almost fortress-like Hotel Intercontinental and went through 5 levels of security, we were shown into the conference room.

As I stepped in, I noticed much to my surprise... I was made to sit next to Mrs. Bush herself. Now my paranoia skyrocketed; what if I forgot my speech? What if I forgot English, started talking in my native tongue ?' I even tried to escape the hotel but the CIA people caught me (ok, now I'm exaggerating, but I really did want to run away). Mounting fear. Uncomfortable shoes. Dysfunctional airconditioning. Everything seemed to be going wrong. I was pacing up and down the corridor. Unable to eat much of the lavish buffet offered to us while we were waiting. Everyone else on the team was equally anxious... Our eyes would meet, attempt to reassure each other and then return to looking into space, revising our respective speeches. Finally it was time. Edit stepped inside the conference room to recieve the First Lady as the rest of us waited. Hardly moving, definitely not breathing. The cameras were clicking, blinding all of us with their flash. Suddenly I had all the sympathy in the world for the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Then we saw her, dressed in a cream coat and black skirt. There was something warm about Mrs. Bush. We all instantly felt at ease. She came and sat down next to me, thanked us for giving her an opportunity to listen about our work. Then Edit took over and introduced Women without Borders, its birth, essence, aims and future plans. Georgina took the mic next, and in two minutes she told the First Lady about the football program we run for girls in Rwanda. Elisabeth was next with her info about the ground-breaking post tsunami swimming project in India; she was shivering but spoke beautifully. Then it was my turn. Much to my surprise, it went just fine. I was able to allow Mrs. Bush to see not only what our endevour was about but also what we intended to do in the near future. The first lady was very impressed with Girls without Borders. She agreed that it is essential to help girls as they are the future.  She also said that the countries who don't respect their women cannot progress. Finally, Kate presented her piece about future programs for a camp for Saudi Arabian, Austrian and American girls.

The First Lady's interest in our work was refreshing as well as encouraging. She seemed eager to help. The experience was absolutely wonderful. We hope that this kind of platform will make our work more visible, and that more people will want to join hands and improve the condition of girls everywhere. Personally,  it gave me an opportunity to talk about the problems in my country, which was very important to me. Thank you Girls without Borders !

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