00:00 It is a great honor to be accepting this very prestigious award.
00:04 I would like to accept this award on behalf of every little African girl that has dared to dream.
00:12 And there are many in this room today.
00:15 And it's honestly an honor to be recognized among some of the most impactful and inspirational individuals in Africa.
00:23 And to me, even in the world, I really admire some of you here.
00:28 And you know, when moments like this happen, I always go back to four-year-old Sherry.
00:35 In the village, playing, no father.
00:40 We didn't have much growing up and there wasn't much hope.
00:45 But I had God and I had dreams.
00:49 So one day my mom decided to move us to the UK.
00:54 And when I moved to the UK, I was lucky to have the opportunity to go to theater school, singing school.
01:02 And I learned that, you know, the arts can actually be a career.
01:09 So, you know, this is why I'm very passionate about what our foundation does,
01:14 because I am an example of what can come out when you put energy into young Rwandan girls and boys.
01:23 And you allow them to chase their passions and chase their dreams.
01:28 And for our foundation, it's the Sherry Silver Foundation.
01:34 You know, one thing that's really important to me is bringing these activities and this infrastructure
01:42 that these young people so desperately crave to their doorstep,
01:47 rather than them feeling that they have to leave Africa in order to achieve their artistic dreams.
01:53 So we will not stop until we have built talent development centers all over Africa.
02:00 And we are in the process of doing this because these young people deserve it.
02:06 And right now in Rwanda, we work around Africa, but in Rwanda, we're working in a small center.
02:12 And you can see what can be achieved with that.
02:16 And one thing that I also want to say is art is really important,
02:21 because some of these kids here standing on this stage, while I was getting so emotional in the video,
02:28 is a lot of them lived on the street, some of them.
02:31 And we took them, we housed them, we put them back with their families,
02:36 and we taught them how to sing, some of them, we taught them how to dance.
02:39 Some of these kids here, they pay their rent through dancing.
02:43 They look after their whole family through drumming.
02:46 So, yeah.
02:48 [APPLAUSE]
02:53 So the arts is a very, very powerful tool.
02:57 And I just--
02:58 [LAUGHS]
03:01 Over there, we have Precious and Sapphire.
03:03 These two babies come here.
03:04 [APPLAUSE]
03:12 So these two angels are an example of what happens when you don't give up hope on someone.
03:22 They lost their mom when they were born, the day they were born.
03:26 And we took them on ever since.
03:28 That was four years ago.
03:30 And everyone had really lost hope in them.
03:33 But look at them.
03:33 They're standing here performing for you at the Time 100.
03:38 [APPLAUSE]
03:40 They may not know what this means today, but when they look back, they'll be very proud of themselves.
03:46 So I just want to thank everyone, even Fred, everyone that supports us by booking us for
03:52 your shows and giving these kids an opportunity, because you are really, truly impacting lives.
03:58 So thank you.
04:00 [APPLAUSE]
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