Who: 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who was shot on October 6, 2012 in her home country of Pakistan by the Taliban because she was in favor of women attending school. The Taliban also targeted her because of her anonymous blog she took over on BBC’s website when she was 11, which discussed how she thought the Taliban was unfair.
What she’s done since 2012:
Started the Malala Yousafzai Foundation, which provides education and schools for girls in Pakistan. The first grant provided 40 girls the money to go to school, who otherwise would have been pushed into the workforce.
Wrote and published her book, I Am Malala, to inspire kids to go to school through telling her struggles.
Addressed the United Nations on her 16th birthday in July 2013. She discussed how the Taliban attacked her and how “the extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.”
In October 2013, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person to ever be nominated for this award. Although she did not win, she has won a variety of awards in 2013, including Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award 2013 and the Children’s Peace Prize.
Why she’s still speaking out: She hopes to give kids the chance to be able to go to school every day. By speaking out against the Taliban, who are against letting children going to school, she hopes to target the world’s initiative of furthering education because, according to Gordon Brown, a United Nations envoy for global education. He spoke at a UN meeting two weeks after Yousafzai was shot to address her condition, where Brown said, “despite a global commitment that every child would be in primary school by 2015, 61 million children of primary-school age are still not in education, 32 million of them girls…This wonderful young woman is fighting for her life because she fought for the right of every girl to go to school. Now we must all fight for Malala’s cause.”
