Poverty Is Not Your Address: A Memoir

"Poverty is not your address. It is not your name. It is not your ceiling."Born into a family of modest means in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Nargis Akhtar grew up with little money but an unshakeable faith—the certainty that God does not bring you to a door without a reason. That belief did not make the road easy. It made the road possible.In her early twenties, she left everything she knew and boarded a plane to London with twenty pounds in her pocket and a promise to pray every day of her life. London taught her resilience. There she met Saleem, an aeronautical engineer, and together they built a life rooted in faith, partnership, and courage. In 1979 they moved to the United States, settling in Louisiana to raise their two sons.Faced with a childcare system she believed asked too little of young children, Nargis did what she had always done—she refused to accept less than what was possible. In 1984, with a five-thousand-dollar leap of faith from a friend who believed in a plan written on paper, she founded Children's College in Slidell, Louisiana. For more than forty years she poured her heart into that school and the generations of children it shaped.Poverty Is Not Your Address is the story of a woman who crossed three continents on faith, dedication, and courage. It is written for the woman who feels she has started too late, come too far, or been knocked down too many times. It is written for the child who is told that where they come from will define where they go. And it is written for everyone who has ever stood at the edge of something terrifying and heard a quiet voice say: go.From the shores of East Africa to a small Louisiana city she came to call home, this is a testament to what one life, lived faithfully, can become. Read more