World Famous Person I Admire

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai also known as Malala is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai became an advocate for girls’ education when she herself was still a child.  On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala.

Early life

Malala was born on 12 July 1997 and grew up in Mingora, Pakistan, located in the country’s Swat Valley.

Yousafzai attended a school that her father had founded. After the Taliban began attacking girls’ schools in Swat, Yousafzai gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?”

In early 2009, when she was just 11 years old, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. However, she was revealed to be the BBC blogger in December of that year.

With a growing public platform, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an education. Her activism resulted in a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. That same year, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize.

Nine months after being shot by the Taliban, Malala gave a speech at United Nations on her 16th birthday in 2013. Yousafzai highlighted her focus on education and women’s rights.

Once she was in the United Kingdom, in March 2013, she was able to begin attending school in Birmingham.

Achievements

In October 2013, the European Parliament awarded Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

In October 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, at just 17 years old; she received the award along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

In April 2017, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Yousafzai as a U.N. Messenger of Peace to promote girls education.

Yousafzai was also given honorary Canadian citizenship in April 2017. She is the sixth person and the youngest in the country’s history to receive the honor.

The Malala Fund

In 2013, Yousafzai and her father launched the Malala Fund, which works to ensure girls around the world have access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. These countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, are where most girls miss out on secondary education.

For her 18th birthday, in July 2015, Yousafzai continued to take action on global education by opening a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. Its expenses covered by the Malala Fund, the school was designed to admit nearly 200 girls from the ages of 14 to 18.

I really admire Malala Yousafzai for her courage, strength and passion.

I respect her, because she went through so much hard time, but she never gave up and she fought for her rights as well as the rights of all girls for education.

Malala started to speak about this problem in her country, when she was still a child without any fear.

She is just incredible and she inspires me a lot. She shows me that it doesn’t matter how old are you, where are you from or what gender you are, If you want your voice to be heard, you can make it happen! You just have to want it to happen with all your heart like your life depends on it!

I have always been interested in politics and global issues like that for example and when I grow up, I want to be in global organisations and to fight for equality between women and men like those situations or against racism and other world-wide problems going on around the world. Malala is my idol and a big inspiration to me.