In Her Own Words: A Young Tanzanian Woman Working Towards Success

This post is part of our month-long series featuring Greatest Women of the Day, in recognition of Women's History Month.

To nominate a Greatest Woman of the Day, e-mail Impact@huffingtonpost.com.

This month, we're covering women making change--big and small--around the world. Today, in partnership with She's The First, we're featuring a letter from a young Tanzanian woman, Elizabeth David. Below, she shares her story, goals, and role models.

I'm Elizabeth David. I'm 19 years old and I live in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. I
study at Arusha Secondary School, which is a boarding school. I'm in my last
year of advanced level (A-level), and I take three main subjects, which are
history, geography, and economics, and also two subsidiaries, which are basic
applied mathematics and general studies. My goals are to be a successful
businesswoman in 10 years, to help Tanzanian women in any way I can.

In my first year of A-level at Arusha Secondary, I joined the Kisa Project. It's a
project which deals with providing leadership education to girls in
Tanzania. In Kisa, we did different projects like teaching computer at our
school. Also, we had a leadership summit of 10 days in which we got many guest
speakers from different places and occupations. Some were women lawyers and
successful businesswomen and leaders. They inspired me a lot and made me
realize that I want to be a role model to my fellow African women and girls
and also help them in any way I can.

In Women's History Month, there are a lot of women who inspire me to reach this
goal and overcome any obstacle that I may face. One of them is my
mom, Mrs. Suzan Samson. I admire the courage she has shown
in raising me and my two elder sisters, making sure that my sisters get a good
education and go to university. She has always shown herself to be a
strong, tolerant, loving woman who is always ready to help others in
need, even if she doesnt have much herself. Also, I learn
from Oprah Winfrey, she had passed through a lot of hardships in life but
turned out to be a very successful woman. And Dr. Anna Makinda, my fellow
Tanzanian who is the first woman to be a parliament speaker in our country.

Tanzanian women are very hardworking women. They struggle a lot so that their
children wont starve or not get education. Although to some extent men still
see them inferior, nowadays the women don't care about it anymore. Instead,
they put extra efforts, and they end up proving the men wrong. A lot of
Tanzanian women who were just housewives decide to get out of their houses
and start their own small businesses--from them they have succeeded
to build their own houses, put the kids in school, and cover other daily house
expenses. So I might say that Tanzanian women are very strong, tolerant and
courageous.

Love,
Elizabeth

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