Malala: The Brave Champion of Education for Girls

out on behalf of girls education. She went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, becoming at eight seventeen, the youngest ever Nobel Laureate. I'm a land Revere and this is Seneca's one Women to Hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women you need to hear. In two thousand and twelve, Malala yosef Sized town in Pakistan was under the control of the Taliban. Girls were told not to attend school.

Malala spoke out publicly in opposition to the Taliban. A girl with a book and a pen is a frightening proposition. Education for girls was a threat a challenge to the forces of extremism and what they stood for. Malala barely survived the attack, whisked away to England for medical treatment. She not only lived, but kept up the fight for

girls education by establishing the Malala Fund. This year, Malala graduated from Oxford University, and her Malala Fund continues to advocate for the hundred and thirty million girls around the world who are still not in school. The Fund's goal is to ensure that every girl has access to twelve years of free, safe, and quality education. Her inspiration in this work is her father, Ziaden Yosefsai, an educator who was determined to give his daughter every opportunity a boy

would have. The Malala Funds work is even more urgent today. The organization's research indicates that twenty million girls who have left school because of COVID may never go back to the classroom, and the and is working to ensure that girl's education is a key consideration in post pandemic rebuilding. At the end of this episode will tell you how you can help the Malala Fund, But first let's hear Malala in her own words her speech when she accepted

the Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand and fourteen. Listen and learn why Malala Yosufsai is one of Seneca's on women to hear this Mala Rahman raheem in the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficient. Your Majesty's, your Royal Highness is distinguished members of the Norwegian Noble Committee. Yes, sisters and brothers. Today is the day of great happiness for me. I'm humbled that the Noble Committee has selected me for this precious award. Thank you to everyone for

your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me. I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Yeah, thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth, which we strongly believe is the true

message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave. I'm proud, well, in fact, I'm very proud to be the first Pashtoon, the first Pakistani and the youngest person to receive this award. M along with that. Along with that, I'm pretty certain, but I'm also the first recipient of the Noble Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be piece everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on that.

I'm also honored to receive this award together with Calasti, who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time, twice as long in fact that I have been alive. I'm proud that we can work together. We can work together and show the world that an engine in a Pakistani they can work together and achieve their goals of children's rights. Dead brothers and sisters. I was named after the inspirational Malala of me one, who is

the personal in John of Arc. The word Malala means grief stricken, said, but in order to learn some happiness to it. My grandfather would always call me Malala the happiest skill in the world. And today I'm very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause. This award, it's not just for me, It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who

want change. I'm here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice. It is not time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action. So it becomes the last time, the last time. So it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education. Yeah, I have found that people describe me in many different ways. Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban, and some the girl who fought for her rights. Some

people called my lob a nobel laureate. Now, however, my brother still called me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I'm just a committed, an even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education, who was to see women having equal rights, and who wants peace in every corner of the world. Education is one of the blessings of life and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the seventeen years of my life. In my Paradise home, Swath, I always loved

learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with Hannah on special occasions, and instead of drawing flowers and patrons, you would paint on ends with mathematical formulas and equations. We had a thirst for education. We had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We love to wear neat and tidy school uniforms, and we would sit there

with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excelin our studies and achieve those goals which some people think only boys can. But things did not remain the same. When I was in swath We, it was a place of tourism and beauty suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten that more than four schools were destroyed, women were flogged, people were killed. There are beautiful dreams

turned into nightmares. Education went from being a right to being a crime. Girls were stopped from going to school. When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too. I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed, and the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one. I decided to speak of We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights,

ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them, have you not learned? Have you not learned that in the Holy Puran Alas says, if you kill one person, it is as if you kill the whole humanity? Do you not know that Muhammad please be upon him, the prophet of mercy. He says, do not harm yourself or others? And do you not know with the very first word of the

Holy Quran is the word akra, which means red. The terrorists try to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today on our school bus in two thou and twelve, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win. We survived, and since that day our voices have grown louder and louder. Yeah, Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear will be back after this short break. I tell my story not because it is unique, but because it is not. It is the story of many

girls today. I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria, and from Syria who shared this story. My brave sisters Chase and Kinda, who are also shot that day on our school bus, but they have not stopped learning. In My brave sister kind of som Row who went through severe abuse and extreme violence. Even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb. Also, my sister's here whom

I have met during my Melana Fant campaign. My sixteen year old courageous sister mos Zoon from Syria who now lives in Jordan as a refugee, and she goes from ten to ten encouraging girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina from the north of Nigeria will bo go around, threatens and stops girls and even kidnaps girls just for wanting to go to school. Do I appear as one girl? Do I appear as one girl? One person who's five ft two inches tall? If you include

my high heels, it means I'm five ft only. I'm not a lone voice. I'm not a lone voice. I am Many, i am Mallalah, but I'm also shah Ziah. I'm kind of, I'm kind of som Raw, I'm Mozoon, I am Amina, I am those sixties six million girls who are deprived of education. And today I'm not raising my voice, it is the voice of those sixty six million girls. M. Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school? Why is it important for them?

But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they Why shouldn't they have this right to go to school? M dead brothers and sisters. Today, in half of the world we see rapid progress and development. However, there are many countries where millions still suffer from the very old problems of war, poverty, and injustice. We still see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children become orphans.

We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Jazza, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts. Many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty, and as I said, we still see we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria.

Many children in countries like Pakistan and in India. Last mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan, are the part of their right to education because of social tables, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labor. One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who have who has always been bald and confident, girl dreamed of becoming a doctor, but her dream remained

a dream. At the age of twelve, she was forced to get married and then soon she had a son. She had a child when she herself was a child only fourteen. I know that she could have been a very good doctor, but she couldn't because she was a girl. Her story is why I dedicate the Noble Thas Prize money into the Malala Fund to help give girls quality education everywhere anywhere in the world and to raise their voices.

The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan, especially in my home of Swath and shang La. In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls, and it is my wish and my commitment and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get quality education and they get this opportunity to fulfill their dreams. This is where I will begin, but it is not where I

will stop. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school, their brothers and sisters. Great people who brought change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Sushi once stood here on this stage. I hope the steps that Kills and I have taken so far and we'll take on this journey will also bring change, lasting change. My great hope is that this will be the last time. This will be the last time we must fight for education.

Let's solve this once and for all. We have already taken many steps. Now it is time to take a leap. It is not time to tell the world leaders to realize how important education is. They already know it. Their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children. We asked the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority. Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the

Millennium Development Goals. In the years that have followed, we have seen some progress. The number of children out of school has been halved. As last said, However, the world focused only on primary education, and progress did not reach everyone. In year two thousand and fifteen, representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals, sustainable development Goals. This will set the world's ambition for the next generations. The world

can no longer accept that. The world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries only basic literacy is sufficient. When their own children do homework in algebra, mathematics, science, and physics. Leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality, primary and secondary education for every child. Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Yeah,

or maybe even impossible, But it is time. The world thing is bigger. Your sisters and brothers, the so called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace. Why is it? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it why is it that making thanks is

so easy but building schools is so hard. We are living in the modern age, and we believe that nothing is impossible we have reached the moon years ago, and maybe will soon learned on Mars. Then, in this twenty one century, we must be able to give every child quality education. Your sisters and brothers, dear fellow children. We must work, not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders. We all need to contribute, me you, we It is our duty. Let us become the first generation

to decide to be the last. Let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials. Let this be the last time that a gun or a boy spends their childhood in a factory. Let this be the last time that the gun is forced into early child marriage. Let this be the last time that a child loses life in war. At this be the last time that we see a child out of school. Let this end

with us. Let's begin this ending together today, right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now. Thank you so much, Thank you. What an inspiration. Imagine the courage of a girl who took a bullet for education. There's so much to learn from Malala. Here are some things that really resonated with me. First, Malala asks us all to be bold Now, she says, is the time to guarantee a free,

quality primary and secondary education for every child. And to those who say this is too expensive or too hard, she replies that we have to think bigger to spend as much on books and schools as we do on guns and war. Second, Malala also shows us the power of one voice. Her words continue to have the force to change the world because she is speaking, in fact, for millions. Finally, Malala reminds us that it is the duty of each of us to help bring about a

better tomorrow in whatever way we can. The Malala Fund is doing that by supporting local education heroes, as well as research and advocacy. You can help by donating at Malala dot org. Tune in next Tuesday to hear about our next featured woman and discover why she's one of Seneca's Women to Hear. Seneca's One with Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner p And.

If you like what you heard on the show, rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, we hope you'll join us for our next episode of one hundred Women to hear where we can all listen, learn and get inspired. Have a great day.