Malala Yousafzai: Voice for Education reading Exercise

Malala Yousafzai was born in 1997 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where her father, Ziauddin, ran a modest school that welcomed girls as eagerly as boys. She grew up listening to classroom debates about poetry and politics, often standing on a chair to recite speeches she had memorized from history books. When a local Taliban faction began broadcasting threats that girls should abandon their studies, Malala accompanied her father to town halls, arguing that literacy was a birthright, not a luxury.

As checkpoints spread through Mingora and soldiers patrolled before sunrise, Malala rallied her classmates to keep attending lessons even if the blackboards were dusty and the windows shattered. She hid her textbooks beneath a shawl and, after evening prayers, recorded audio diaries describing empty desks and confiscated science kits. BBC Urdu offered her a pseudonymous blog; under the name “Gul Makai,” she chronicled whispered fears at morning assembly and the courage required simply to open a notebook.

Community elders urged families to leave the valley, yet Malala insisted on staying, convinced that visibility mattered more than safety. Local reporters quoted her line, “Education is the only ladder out of the shadows,” and her words traveled from village loudspeakers to international newsrooms. By age twelve, she was meeting diplomats at roadside tea stalls, urging them to pressure Pakistan’s leaders to protect every child’s desk, chalk, and teacher.

On October 9, 2012, Malala sat on a pea-green school bus reviewing notes from a science exam when a gunman boarded, asked for her by name, and fired three bullets at close range. Her friends Kainat and Shazia were wounded; Malala’s injury fractured her skull and required an airlift to a military hospital in Peshawar. Surgeons removed bone fragments and stabilized swelling before transferring her to Birmingham, England, for advanced cranial reconstruction.

News of the attack ignited global outrage. Students in Nairobi lit candles around chalkboards that read “Books Not Bullets,” while teenagers in São Paulo marched with placards bearing Malala’s photograph. Pakistan’s president visited her bedside, and the United Nations declared her birthday, July 12, “Malala Day,” inviting youth delegations to demand safe schools worldwide.

Three months after the shooting, still recovering her balance and hearing, Malala stood before the United Nations Youth Assembly. Wearing a shawl once owned by Benazir Bhutto, she insisted, “One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world.” Her speech urged governments to guarantee twelve years of free education and called on communities to reject fear. The applause that followed signaled that a local struggle in Swat had become a global mandate.

After months of rehabilitation, Malala co-founded the Malala Fund with her father to invest in community-led education projects. The organization now partners with activists from Nigeria to Brazil, backing everything from solar-powered classrooms to teacher training in refugee settlements. Grants are prioritized for girls who face intersecting barriers—poverty, early marriage, displacement, or conflict.

In 2014, the Nobel Committee awarded Malala the Peace Prize, which she shared with Indian child-rights advocate Kailash Satyarthi. At seventeen, she pledged the prize money to expand secondary schools in Pakistan and launched a Girl Power Trip to spotlight local leaders in Jordan, Kenya, and northern Nigeria. Her acceptance speech emphasized that the prize belonged “to every child who longs for an education.”

Today Malala balances lectures at Oxford University with field visits to see projects in action. She has urged G7 leaders to commit billions to education, partnered with Apple to create coding curricula for girls, and written op-eds pressing tech companies to connect rural classrooms to reliable internet. Whether addressing the Canadian Parliament or meeting Rohingya students in Cox’s Bazar, she frames education as a universal right and reminds audiences that “we are strongest when every voice can learn, speak, and lead.”