Former U.S. Laura Keynote Speaker, 96th International Convention, Hamburg, Germany

Thank you very much, thanks everybody! Thank you all, and thank you very much, Wayne Madden, the president of Lions Clubs International! Also thanks to

Hamburg’s mayor Scholz for welcoming us all to your beautiful city.

I am happy to be with all of you for the Lions Clubs International Convention.

Thank you for asking me to join you, and thank you for the great work that Lions

Clubs do in each one of your communities.

You’ve been giving the gift of sight to millions of people worldwide since you were first inspired in 1925 by Helen Keller. And now, you are beginning reading and programs, causes that are near and dear to me. Lions Clubs everywhere are organizing service projects everywhere to address the literacy needs in each of your communities. You’re finding ways for parents and children to read together, and you are continuing to give the gift of sight with free eye exams to make sure that everyone can see to read. Thank you all very much for your marvelous work. George and I are now back home in , , and we’ve been busy building the George W. Bush Presidential Center. As part of the Bush Presidential Center, we’ve established the Bush Institute, a public policy institute, where we can address the policy areas that were the most important to us when George was president. And, as you might guess, at the Bush Institute, there’s an overriding theme of freedom. Freedom from ignorance, our initiative. Freedom from disease, our global health initiative. Promoting free enterprise, our economic initiative and freedom from tyranny.

George has a special program to support the men and women of the

Military, and I am chairing the women’s initiative. Last week we were in , where we launched our global health initiative, the Pink Ribbon, Red Ribbon. Pink

Ribbon, Red Ribbon adds the testing and treatment of cervical and breast cancer to the AIDS platform that was set up during the years when George was president.

Cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among African women. In

Zambia, we refurbished a health clinic, painting and installing medical equipment.

In the yard, dozens of women gathered waiting for us to finish the construction, so they could come in and be screened for cancer. Later, in , the Bush

Institute hosted an African First Ladies’ conference. and Cherie

Blair from England joined us and eight African first ladies to discuss good health for women and education for women and girls. We’ve had a busy and exciting year so far.

In April, at the dedication of the Bush Presidential Center, we were honored that

President Obama and each of the former American Presidents joined us, including and especially, my father and mother-in-law, President George H. W. Bush and

Barbara Bush. At age 88 and 89 they are doing very well. George and I believe they are showing us the way to age with grace. In , my mother-in-law walks her dogs on the beach every day, twice a day. From both of George’s parents we have learned all we know we have is now. So take advantage of your life as it is, and walk on the beach every chance you get.

But the biggest event we celebrated this year was the birth of our first grandchild, our new granddaughter Mila. She is perfect, and our daughter Jenna and our son- in-law Henry are thrilled with their new baby. Although they have to be careful of being trampled by George and me in our rush to get our hands on that darling child. Everybody has been asking us what our grandparents’ names are. It seems that in the United States these days, many grandparents are choosing special names for themselves. Maybe grandpa and grandma have gone out of style in a pretense that we’re not really old enough to really be grandparents. When I had Barbara and

Jenna, my dad said: “They can just call their old Pa.” And that’s what they did. But now it’s sort of like choosing a name for your cat. Barbara and Jenna recently emailed that, for absolutely no apparent reason–and I am not kidding –they think my grandparent name should be Mimi Maxwell. George just wants the baby to call him “Sir.”

(Laughter)

We are happy that our girls are doing well. Jenna and Henry Hager are enjoying life with their new baby. Jenna is working as a contributing correspondent for

NBC’s Today Show. George says, she is just continuing the tradition of warm relations with the media.

(Laughter)

Our daughter Barbara has founded a nonprofit called that places recent college graduates in the health field in underserved areas. Her third group of Health Corps Fellows is at work in three cities in the United States and in five countries in Africa. You can learn more about Global Health Corps, if you are interested, or if you know a young person, who might be interested in becoming a fellow, by looking on the web at GHCorps.org. George and I are proud of the work our girls are doing, and we are happy to be back home in Texas living what I call the afterlife in a state George calls the Promised Land.

(Laughter)

There are some people from the Promised Land here, as you can tell. Now, that George and I have left the and moved into our new home in Dallas, our lives are back to normal. But I think I might have forgotten what

“normal” is. When you are married to the President of the United States, you don’t worry too much about him leaving his wet towels on the floor. But in Dallas, things are different. Memo to the ex-president: turmoil in East Timur is no longer an excuse not to pick up your socks. Since we’ve been home, we both have written our memoirs (No. 1 Times best sellers, by the way) and I learned when

Barbara and Jenna introduced me at a speaking engagement recently that they were a bit disappointed in my book. They knew that their librarian mother had named her cat Dewey after the Dewey decimal system. But they thought that when they read my book, they would discover the wild, secret life they just knew I would be hiding from them. Instead, their blandest suspicions about me were confirmed: they learned, for instance, that as a child, I harbored an insatiable love for–of all things–school supplies. I still do. I love school. Which is why I am happy to be here with so many people, who are dedicating themselves to improving reading and literacy. And thank you to all of the Lions Clubs for doing that.

Worldwide, more than 796 million adults are illiterate. Two thirds of those are women. And 67 million children are not in school. Helping each of these men, women and children learn to read is one of the greatest challenges of our time. A woman in once told me: “When I was sick, I couldn’t find my way to the doctor because I couldn’t read the signs.” If people can read, they are more likely to know not only how to get to the doctor, but how diseases like HIV and malaria are transmitted. If they know that information, they can take the precaution and make informed decisions that will keep them and their families safe and healthy. Literacy lifts men and women out of poverty and it opens doors of opportunity. Educated citizens learn the skills they need to find jobs and to support their families. And as women and men participate in business and trade, they strengthen the economic development of their countries. Educated people are empowered to participate more fully in society. Literacy enables them to ask questions and to understand their rights. They can read an election ballot and they can make informed decisions about their governments. Literacy education is especially important for women and girls, who are far more likely than boys to be left out of the classroom. In fact, the majority of illiterate adults are women.

Research shows that when you educate and empower women, you improve nearly every other aspect of society.

As the great Egyptian poet Hafez Ibrahim said: “When you educate a woman, you create a nation.”

In 2002, fewer than 900,000 boys and no girls were enrolled in school in

Afghanistan. Today, more than 6.2 million students are enrolled in Afghanistan’s schools, and 35 percent of them are girls. These are signs of great progress but many challenges remain. Girls may be persecuted on their way to class. Newly opened schools have been vandalized or destroyed. In many rural areas, those who teach, receive letters threatening their lives and the lives of their children. We all know the story of Malala, the school girl in neighboring Pakistan, who was shut by a Taliban gunman because of her passionate support for the education of girls. The good news is that there are many women and men, who are willing to risk their own lives for the education of others.

One such woman is Dr. Sakina Yukubi of Afghanistan. At great personal risk, Dr.

Yukubi operated underground literacy centers during the years of the Taliban rule.

Today, she runs more than 40 women’s centers across Afghanistan providing hundreds of thousands of women with literacy and health classes.

It’s been one of my greatest pleasures to serve as the Ambassador for UNESCO’s

Literacy Decade. UNESCO’s goal for literacy is simple: that every person–man, woman and child–in every nation would acquire the literacy skills to participate fully in society. To achieve that goal, everyone of us must seize opportunities to ensure that literacy remains a priority. Here, your efforts have an important role to play. Through the Lions Clubs Reading Action Program, in just one year, Lions members from around the world have completed over 65,000 reading activities.

You’ve hosted adult and juvenile literacy programs. You’ve read to children.

You’ve taught blind children to use Braille. You’ve provided computers for classrooms. You’ve worked with local schools to provide tutors, and you’ve donated books to schools and libraries. Through these efforts, the Lions Reading

Action Program will reach over 6 million people. The Lions Reading Action

Program was originally intended to be just a one-year initiative, but it’s been so successful that the board of directors has extended the program for 10 years.

Congratulations to each one of you!

As my father-in-law, George H. W. Bush, once said: “Any definition of a successful life must include service to others.” As Lions Club members you are committed to helping your neighbors in need, and you are serving in 202 countries around the world.

Most of us know the Lions as the Knights of the Blind. Inspired by Helen Keller, you work to help those who are visually impaired. You found eye hospitals and you provide scholarships to help train ophtalmologists and optometrists, you’ve paid for millions of cataract surgeries in the developing world, you even help to provide seeing-eye dogs. Through your work with the Gates Foundation, African children are now vaccinated against measles, a leading cause of blindness. Thank you for example of service you’ve set, and thank you for the wonderful difference you are making in millions of lives.

The years that George served as president in the first decade of the new century, were as consequential as almost anytime in our history, and we were privileged to meet firsthand the kind of people that those years called forth. We met the voices of freedom, like the former Czech President, Vaclav Havel. At the White House and at our ranch at Crawford, we hosted presidents and prime ministers, the Queen of England, the Dalai Lama and the Pope on his birthday. But the most inspiring people we encountered during those two presidential terms didn’t have . They were the first responders, who worked past exhaustion and in peril of their own health and safety to rescue people in New York and in Washington on September

11, 2001. They were the brave men and women, who volunteered to defend our country and who risked their lives and too often gave their lives, so that the rest of us may never know terror again.

They were the volunteers of all ages, who made their way to the Gulf Coast after

Hurricane Katrina to cook meals and distribute clothing and offer comfort to families who had lost everything. They are the , who helped influence and change the lives of the students they taught. Teachers, like my second-grade , Miss Nagy. She was my favorite teacher and I wanted to be just like her.

So when I graduated from college in 1968 with a degree in education, I applied to teach at an inner-city school. I wanted to work with children, who had been left out, and too often left behind. But I wasn’t prepared for the poverty I encountered in an inner-city, , Texas, school. Most of the students lived in narrow side streets behind the school building in houses with peeling paint and loose shingles. Some were hungry. They would come to school in the morning with their bellies rumbling and ravenously attacked the free breakfast and lunch that we gave them. I wanted to help those children so badly, to somehow reach into their lives and make a difference. But it was an uphill fight. Before I left that teaching job to go to graduate school, I decided to take some of favorite students for a special day to an amusement park. We picked up several eager kids but when we came to the last house, the little boy who was supposed to go with us opened the door in his underwear. Though we could hear his mother in the back of the house, she never came to the door to give us permission to take him. So we had no choice but leave him there. All I could do was to hug him goodbye with an extra squeeze and leave him there, standing to watch us all drive off to the amusement park without him.

Of course, not all stories end in triumph, we all know that. And if I ever need to remind myself of that fact, all I have to do is think back to the memory of the that little 9-year-old boy in Houston standing at his door in his underwear. The little boy, who didn’t get to go with us to the amusement park. He would be in his fifties now. What happened to him, I asked myself. Is he still alive? Did he manage to escape that delapidated house in Houston with the mother who wouldn’t come to the door? Did he find another teacher who cared about him? Did he graduate from high school or even college and find a job where he was valued and were he could prove his worth? Is he standing in an airport right now, a proud father anxiously waiting for the plane that will bring his son or his daughter home at last from

Afghanistan? Or is he standing instead by the side of the road with a cardboard sign or sitting by himself in a joyless empty room wandering how it all turned out that way?

So my challenge to you then, is really the same challenge I have given to my own self: to never forget that boy, to never forget that one reading lesson, one pair of glasses, one check written or one busy hour given over to someone, who needs you–these are the things that, quite literally, can make all the difference in the world.

Thank you all! Thank you, and thank you to Lions Clubs International! You are improving our world, and I am grateful for your work! Thank you all very, very much!