英语演讲稿：教育不平等的现状 Educational Inequality

演讲者: Shakira

Good morning Your Highness, excellencies, friends, and colleagues. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

尊敬的殿下，阁下，朋友们，同事们，大家早上好。非常感谢今天有机会来到这里。

It s also an honor to join forces with Educated Child, an organization led by a woman who is an amazing role model — a woman who has shown such relentless dedication to getting every child in school.

我也很荣幸能与由一位女性领导的组织“Educated Child”携手合作，这位女性是非常了不起的榜样——她一直致力于让每个孩子都有学上。

This is such an exciting day for us because it marks the beginning of a new era in my home country Colombia.

今天对我们来说是激动人心的一天，因为在我的故乡哥伦比亚，今天标志着新一年的开始。

Most of you may know me as an artist, as an entertainer, and that s indeed my calling and what I ve been doing since I was 13 years old,

你们大多数人也许知道我是歌手、艺人，这确实是我的职业，也是我从13岁起就一直在做的事情。

but I never would have imagined when I started out that my work as an artist would end up being the vehicle for me to serve my greater purpose in life of working towards eradicating poverty through the power of education.

但是，当我开始创作的时，我从未想过，我的作品最终会成为我实现更大人生目标的载体，即通过教育的力量消除贫困。

As a Colombian citizen inequality as a concept that sadly one becomes very familiar with at a very young age.

作为哥伦比亚公民，不平等这个概念在我们很小的时候就对它非常熟悉。

It s a country like many others in Latin America where a few have a lot, a lot have almost nothing, and where if you re born poor, you will almost certainly die poor,

我们国家和其它拉丁美洲国家一样，在哥伦比亚，少数人拥有很多，多数人却一无所有。如果你生时贫穷，你几乎肯定死时也贫穷。

and where people don t access equal opportunities, and because of that generation after generation after generation live trapped in the same vicious cycle fed by prejudice and inaction.

在哥伦比亚，人们无法获得平等的机会，正因为如此，偏见和不作为造就了同样的恶性循环，使得一代又一代人深陷其中。

Growing up in my country when I was around eight years old, I remember I saw kids my age who, instead of being in school were already working in the streets, were barefoot in the park; kids like me whose reality was completely different than mine only because of the circumstances into which they were born.

我八岁左右的时候，在我的故乡哥伦比亚，我记得我看到过和我同龄的孩子，他们不是在上学，而是在大街上工作，在公园里光着脚；我同龄的孩子却有着与我完全不同的遭遇，这仅仅只是因为他们的出生背景。

It was really hard for me to accept that to accept that something so unjust didn t have a solution.

如此不公之事竟没有解决办法，我真的难以接受。

There had to be something that could be done.

一定会有办法的。

So I often asked myself why the adults around me were so resigned to the fact that these kids who were just like me or even their own children were living in a parallel reality so different and so cruel.

所以我经常问自己，为什么我周围的成年人对这一事实如此逆来顺受：这些和我同龄的孩子，甚至他们自己的孩子，都生活在同样的现实中，人与人是如此不同，生活是如此残酷。