Malala Yousafzai

If Malala Yousafzai has anything to do with it every girl in the world will have the opportunity to learn and lead. Her immediate focus is providing accessto 130 million girls who have been denied the right to education. Through the work of Malala Fund, co-founded with her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, this seemingly audacious goal is, in Malala’s words a matter of “ambition and intention.” What to do is then easy.

There are not many young women who have survived an assassination attempt, or become the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate, or opened the largest library in Europe declaring “pens and books are the weapons that will defeat terrorism.” Even with these accomplishments, Malala does not consider herself extraordinary. That is “simply Malala,” as she would describe herself.

Malala continues to be a catalyzing force in the fight against the ideologies that prohibit educational opportunities for women, globally. It is not just the educational inequities that Malala stands against, it’s the systemic byproducts of violence against women, poverty, and displacement which threaten both their freedoms and their futures. To eradicate the systemic consequences of educational inequities is to empower girls to become women who also achieve greatness.