Hillary Clinton’s Address at the GCU

OCTOBER 29th 2009

LAHORE: During her speech at the GC University, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her first visit to Pakistan representing the Obama Administration acknowledged and lauded the efforts of Responsible Citizens in Lahore and urged the youth of the country to follow in their lead.

The following is an excerpt from the speech:

There is truly no limit to what this, your generation, can do to bring people together in civic engagement, especially with the new technologies that offer the possibility of communicating and collaborating like never before. I read a story in The New York Times earlier this year about a group of students here in Lahore who were tired of the accumulation of trash in their neighborhood. So they did what any social activists do today. They went on Facebook and invited their friends to come out and collect trash on that Sunday. Then they did it again on the next Sunday and then on another Sunday, and they convinced people who were walking by to join them. They asked shopkeepers to pitch in. They named their group Responsible Citizens. And today, their Facebook community has more than 1,600 members.

Some might say, well, what does picking up trash have to do with democracy? It empowers individuals to take action that needs to be done, no one else is doing it, and it is not left to someone else to do. It imbues the entire community with a sense of empowerment and opportunity. And I commend these students and hope that their numbers grow by leaps and bounds. Because today, it has never been easier for the young people of Pakistan to unite in common cause across class barriers and geographic divides to make your nation a better place and to inculcate those habits of the heart.

The full text of the speech can be found here.