Rwanda Choreographer Sherrie Silver Wants African Girls to Dream Big
Sherrie Silver remembers when her 4-year-old self was “just a girl playing in the village with my friends, no father, and not much hope, just dreams, and God,” she said from the stage at the inaugural TIME100 Africa Gala, where she received a Time100 Impact Award on Friday (Nov. 18) in Kigali, Rwanda.
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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]