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HSBC WOMEN'S WORLD MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

July 18, 2007

NEW ROCHELLE, NEW YORK

DANA GROSS-RHODE: I would like to thank everyone for coming in. We have Rowin Floth on the very end with World Vision; Betsy King, who is the player Tour rep; Ambassador James Kimonyo and Kathryn Compton of World Vision.
BESTY KING: Thank you very much. I want to thank you for coming today. I'm very excited to make this announcement to all of you here today. First of all I want to thank the LPGA and staff and Carolyn Bivens, our commissioner, is here and for their support of this project.
I had the opportunity in October of last year to spend two weeks in Africa with World Vision. It was a life changing trip. I was in Kenya, Zambia and Rwanda, and the devastation that I saw there caused by poverty and the AIDS pandemic was often overwhelming. I was impressed by how World Vision works in these countries, and I also was impressed by the heart of the African people, particularly in Rwanda. As many of you know, in 1994, there were close to a million people killed in the space of a hundred days. So not only is Rwanda recovering from poverty, but also the genocide. I met a woman who lost 70 members of her family in that incident. And she now works for World Vision working on healing, peace and reconciliation.
We also had the opportunity to meet the first lady, Madam Kagame, and found out the president of Rwanda plays golf. There's one 18-hole golf course in the country of Rwanda, and they insisted that I go see that facility.
So to let you know about Golf Fore Africa, we are supporting a village in southern Rwanda called Mudasomwa. Through our partnership with World Vision, we will hopefully raise at least $250,000 to make a difference to those that have been infected or affected by AIDS in the community.
The monies that we raise will go to helping school fees for many of the children that have been orphaned by AIDS, as well as provide food and basic healthcare. I believe you have information about that in your packet.
Also in October of this year, we will return to Rwanda. I am excited to lead a team of LPGA players who are headed there: Katherine Hull, Renee Powell, and I think Reilley Rankin are here who will be part of the trip. Juli Inkster is also going with her family. We will do golf clinics at the Kigali Golf Club for junior golfers, trying to introduce golf to the juniors there, and then we will visit our village in southern Rwanda.
There are 60 children that are now sponsored by LPGA players and their fans, and that commitment is $35 a month which enables a child to go to school, receive clothing, food and healthcare.
Some of the players that are sponsoring children are Reilley Rankin, Katherine Hull, Juli Inkster, Paula Creamer, Brittany Lincicome, also our commissioner and several LPGA staff are sponsoring children, so I'm excited about that. We will have the opportunity to meet some of the children that we're sponsoring.
To date we have raised $150,000, and we have done that through -- on Monday, I played a clinic -- or I played 18 holes out at Maidstone with Lorena Ochoa and Karen Davis, and we sold these golf bands that I think are being passed around as well as received individual donations. Rolex has made a donation, and I want to thank them for that.
And so over the next year and a half, this members' international charity initiative will be supported by the LPGA and its players, and we'll see what happens and hopefully that will blast through that $250,000 figure.
Nicole Castrale is here. She is obtaining some donated clubs from TaylorMade. I've already sent one shipment of golf shots and golf equipment and have another one ready to go that hopefully will arrive before we arrive in October.
I'd like to introduce the Ambassador to share a few words with us now.
AMBASSADOR JAMES KIMONYO: Thank you so much, and thank you everybody for hosting me here today in New York, in New Rochelle. I was late because of the weather. I spent like two or so hours in Washington. But lucky enough, I managed to come here. And I have to confess, I should have come in my jersey for playing golf. (Laughter)
Let me say that when I got this invitation, I was kind of saying to myself, that probably it's going to be very important for me to see how people are committed and assisting people who are suffering. But I thought, it's also important to share this commitment with the people back home. Nobody can imagine that people are sitting here, and I know you have many things to do, but you are coming here personally to assist people who are in a very, very bad situation.
When you look at some of the slides -- when Betsy King and her colleagues came to Rwanda, you can't even read the name of Mudasomwa, but it's a deep, deep in southern Rwanda. And really, this gives me an impression that there are people out there, not because they have enough worth, but because they think through mobilizing friends and colleagues, they can be able to become of important assistance to people who are still very poor.
I'm very sure and convinced that most of you have read or have been to Rwanda, you know the background of our country. It's a country that has gone through very horrible, horrible human tragedy. It was not a natural disaster, but it was rather a manmade disaster. The government that was supposed to otherwise protect the people is the same government that planned to exterminate part of the population. That's how we ended up losing one million people in just a matter of three months.
And I have been reading some stuff that is written about our country and I have had a number of talks around the U.S., and when I was in Chicago at Northwestern University talking to political science students, some of them were talking about a tribal conflict that ended up killing one million, and this is completely total confusion. There is no history in our country whatsoever. There's not any single instance where one ethical group turned against another, nothing. You are only going to read any story about Tutsis in X year in 1960 or 1965 turning against the Hutus or vice-versa. It just so happened that some other people within the government decided to use people against each other just for the sake of creating their own power, even if it meant losing one million people.
But you know the story in 1994, it was the climax of the massive killing experienced since the 1950s, and we have managed it today and confidently I can tell you that we have managed a build a peaceful society, a peaceful country; a country that has vision to develop. And we have vowed, all of us in the government, in the administration and the entire population of Rwanda say: Never shall this happen again to human kind.
And to be able to get out of that misery, it is very important for the governments to put in place mechanisms that will uplift the country to sustainable development. Once we have established peace and stability in the country, once we have put in place millions that ensures that you are building a peaceful society; a society that accepts living together -- this is very important.
My experience, my father was in exile; I was born in Tanzania and grew up in Tanzania. And Tanzania has about 126 tribes, completely different languages and different culture, but these people were living together under the administration. And my experience is that you need really to have such harmonious type of attitude to be able to help you to develop. And that's what the government has been working on and it started with dealing with the root cause of the problem, which was the politics of the divisions are supposed to be done before you talk about the development.
Now, after creating that environment, I think it's also important to create, to put into place mechanism and administration that allows you to develop. So Rwandan government for the last 13 years has been working off and on a number of reforms from governors to justice to political growth and social progress. Now, what I will say is that -- I didn't talk about my background. I'm a scientist. I studied engineering as my profession, and I like using scientific reasoning to see how you can solve problems.
When you are given a mathematics problem to solve, you are given a number of parameters, and with these parameters should be able to come up with an answer. If you are dealing with studies in mathematics, trigonometry questions, you have a lot of parameters, but you end up overall getting an answer of one.
I think it is high time now for the government and people who are committed to World Vision as Betsy King to come together and see how bring together all of these parameters and have one answer, and the answer is to uplift the poor people so they can be able to live the life that -- give them opportunities to develop, to take care of their families and to be able to develop.
So through the mechanisms that I established with the Vision 2020, the National Investment Strategy, National Poverty Reduction Strategy and others, we have a number of priorities that we need to do as well to be able to develop our country. And the areas that we have, there are very many, but I will say the focus of this particular event is assisting the communities that have come up with a plan to develop their own communities in the area of education and in the area of health and other activities to be able to generate income to pay for education and to pay for health services and so on.
Education is one area that is key focus of Vision 2020, but as we understand, you cannot do all of these development programs if you are not dealing squarely with the issue of health. And that's why World Vision -- I was telling you when we were coming here, that we created World Vision in 1994 when they were arranging for people to get homes, but as a part of sustainable living program, they remained in the country, committed to developing these people to live in a healthy condition and to access education and other social services.
So I think that the work you are doing and the announcing of this particular event today fits exactly within the government vision to provide and improve the social services to the population, and this should be done based on their own planning so as to ensure the sense of ownership and sustainability of the programs that we are implementing today. And using these programs are not just giving people; we are now working within the framework of working within their own programs, generated programs that are going to be owned by the operation in southern Rwanda in Mudasomwa and other areas of the country.
So really, I was telling Besty that I'm so excited and this is a wonderful, wonderful event. And I was telling her that it doesn't necessarily mean that we are doing this because you are worth as a person and you have money just to give. It shows that this is the commitment to assist people and should encourage other people like you in the country to come and help Rwandans and help other people who are in need around the world.
Therefore, to me, let me end here by saying the government of Rwanda and the people of Rwanda are very, very thankful for World Vision and allied institutions in the U.S. have been doing and what Betsy King and her team have been doing. We are very supportive of what you have been doing and I pledge my support from Washington, D.C., if you need support, if you need any information, if you want me to work on anything and I get it from this end, I'm ready to do that, and really say that our people are committed to use the tools that you are giving them to maximum ensure that they uplift our people in those areas.
So I thank you very much, and I hope to continue working with you in the future. (Applause).
BESTY KING: Thank you, Mr. Ambassador. I have a check presentation to make to World Vision. In March of this year, the players voted at the player meeting in Phoenix to donate $10,000, and that's included in our figure. And so I want to make that formal presentation of World Vision, and of course that will be used in the community of Mudasomwa in Rwanda, and then we'll open it up to questions.
(Check presentation).

Q. Besty, I think it's great what you're doing; how did you get involved with World Vision in the first place?
BESTY KING: Well, actually back in 2001, it started within our Christian fellowship on Tour that became a Tour-wide project where we did a partnership with World Vision where we raised funds for a village in Tanzania, $225,000 for Ruvu Remiti. And then I kind of kept in contact with World Vision and went with Hilary Lunke and her husband to Honduras in 2005 where we spent a week building homes.
So I had seen World Vision's work firsthand and I think they do a great job. One of the things that they do is that they hire the local people and they go into a community, I'm sure they can answer that for you more, but they go into the community and stay there and have a five-fingered approached to development where they provide food, water, education, healthcare and economic development through micro loans.
I think -- I feel as though I've gotten a new calling past my golf to do this. I'm committed to helping in Africa all I can, and I can't tell you enough about Rwanda and the spirit of the people there. There's a great book called Left to Tell, I'm sure you're familiar with it, but that's one book that talks about one person's experience during the genocide and the spirit that she had to survive. That's why I'm involved and trying to make a difference.
And if we would all do our part, we can literally change the world.
DANA GROSS-RHODE: Thank you very much for coming.

End of FastScripts

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