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Right for everyone. :)

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Come Together Concrete
In Come Together Concrete we continue what we started in the previous project (see below). Come Together Concrete work for and with people with intellectual disabilities. our aim is to increase the knowledge concerning special education, develop brave and innovative communication and crush prejudices.

Come Together
The project Come Together takes on the challenge of securing all children's access to education and focus on a group where only few in the world have the opportunity to attend school; children with disabilities, especially children with intellectual disabilities. We want to contribute to a society where everyone can use their abilities, a society where all of us meet and take part. An important aspect of and prerequisite for this is education for everyone.

Come Together brings together people and organizations from three countries - Tanzania, Rwanda and Sweden with the purpose of together make persons with disabilities visible and work for the right to education. In Sweden we have already reached a bit along the way towards education for everyone, but we still have much to learn from each other when it comes to equal opportunities.

Come Together is funded by the Swedish Postcode Lottery and is run by Swedish National Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability (FUB) together with Eriksdevelopment - a child rights organization working in 24 countries. In Rwanda Collectif Tubakunde ("Love them") is pioneering work for children and youth with intellectual disabilities. In Tanzania our main partner is YDCP Tanga (Youth with Disabilities Community Program) who has reached far, from a low baseline, when it comes to home based care and inclusive education. From the grass-roots and all the way up we aim to change people's attitudes and to influence politicians.

The impetus behind the project is the Millennium Development Goal #2 - that of the right of all children to attend primary school. The Millennium Development Goal's objective is that all children should be in school by 2015. Huge steps have been taken towards this, but we are still lagging far behind when it comes to children with disabilities, since only one in ten of this group currently attends school. The ultimate goal of Come Together is to enable as many children with disabilities as possible and, especially, intellectual disabilities to attend school. At its core Come Together is the facilitation of change through communication and inclusive cultural activities, especially through the universal language of music and the children's own participation.

In Come Together we work with musicians with and without disabilities from all over the world and we will also travel to East Africa together with a group of young persons with intellectual disabilities from Sweden. We believe in the power of people getting together and in music as a common language and means of communication. A documentary will be produced, telling the story of shared creativity and hardships.

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The project Come Together takes on the challenge of securing all children's access to education and focus on a group where only few in the world have the opportunity to attend school; children with disabilities, especially children with intellectual disabilities.

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Everyone is allowed to have freedom. Any who dont agree are mean people.

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Ensuring that all girls and young women receive a quality education is their human right, a global development priority, and a strategic priority for the World Bank.

Achieving gender equality is central to the World Bank Group twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. As the largest financing development partner in education globally, the World Bank ensures that all of its education projects are gender-sensitive, and works to overcome barriers that are preventing girls and boys from equally benefiting from countries' investments in education.

Girls' education goes beyond getting girls into school. It is also about ensuring that girls learn and feel safe while in school; have the opportunity to complete all levels of education, acquiring the knowledge and skills to compete in the labor market; gain socio-emotional and life skills necessary to navigate and adapt to a changing world; make decisions about their own lives; and contribute to their communities and the world.

Both individuals and countries benefit from girls' education. Better educated women tend to be more informed about nutrition and healthcare, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and their children are usually healthier, should they choose to become mothers. They are more likely to participate in the formal labor market and earn higher incomes. A recent World Bank study estimates that the "limited educational opportunities for girls, and barriers to completing 12 years of education, cost countries between US$15 trillion1 and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings." All these factors combined can help lift households, communities, and countries out of poverty.
The Challenge
According to UNESCO estimates, around the world, 129 million girls are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age, and 97 million of secondary school age.

Globally, primary, and secondary school enrollment rates are getting closer to equal for girls and boys (90% male, 89% female). But while enrollment rates are similar - in fact, two-thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary school enrollment - completion rates for girls are lower in low-income countries where 63% of female primary school students complete primary school, compared to 67% of male primary school students. In low-income countries, secondary school completion rates for girls also continue to lag, with only 36% of girls completing lower secondary school compared to 44% of boys. Upper secondary completion rates have similar disparities in lower income countries, the rate is 26% for young men and 21% for young women.

The gaps are starker in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). In FCV countries, girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys, and at the secondary level, are 90% more likely to be out of secondary school than those in non-FCV contexts.

Both girls and boys are facing a learning crisis. Learning Poverty (LP) measures the share of children who are not able to read proficiently at age 10. While girls are on average 4 percentage points less learning-poor than boys, the rates remain very high for both groups. The average of Learning Poverty in in low- and middle- income countries is 55% for females, and 59% for males. The gap is narrower in low-income countries, where Learning Poverty averages about 93% for both boys and girls.

In many countries, enrollment in tertiary education slightly favors young women, however, better learning outcomes are not translating into better work and life outcomes for women. There is a large gender gap in labor force participation rates globally. It is especially stark in regions such as South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, which have some of the lowest female labor force participation rates at 24% and 20% per region, respectively. These are appallingly low rates, considering what is observed in other regions like Latin America (53%) or East Asia (59%), which are still below rates for men.

Gender bias within schools and classrooms may also reinforce messages that affect girls' ambitions, their own perceptions of their roles in society, and produce labor market engagement disparities and occupational segregation. When gender stereotypes are communicated through the design of school and classroom learning environments or through the behavior of faculty, staff, and peers in a child's school, it goes on to have sustained impact on academic performance and choice of field of study, especially negatively affecting young women pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

Poverty is one of the most important factors for determining whether a girl can access and complete her education. Studies consistently reinforce that girls who face multiple disadvantages - such as low family income, living in remote or underserved locations or who have a disability or belong to a minority ethno-linguistic group - are farthest behind in terms of access to and completion of education.

Violence also prevents girls from accessing and completing education - often girls are forced to walk long distances to school placing them at an increased risk of violence and many experience violence while at school. Most recent data estimates that approximately 60 million girls are sexually assaulted on their way to or at school every year. This often has serious consequences for their mental and physical health and overall well-being while also leading to lower attendance and higher dropout rates. An estimated 246 million children experience violence in and around school every year, ending school-related gender-based violence is critical. Adolescent pregnancies can be a result of sexual violence or sexual exploitation. Girls who become pregnant often face strong stigma, and even discrimination, from their communities. The burden of stigma, compounded by unequal gender norms, can lead girls to drop out of school early and not return.

Child marriage is also a critical challenge. Girls who marry young are much more likely to drop out of school, complete fewer years of education than their peers who marry later. They are also more likely to have children at a young age and are exposed to higher levels of violence perpetrated by their partner. In turn, this affects the education and health of their children, as well as their ability to earn a living. Indeed, girls with secondary schooling are up to six times more likely to marry as those children with little or no education. According to a recent report, more than 41,000 girls under the age of 18 marry every day. Putting an end to this practice would increase women's expected educational attainment, and with it, their potential earnings. According to the report's estimates, ending child marriage could generate more than US$500 billion in benefits annually each year.

COVID-19 is having a negative impact on girls' health and well-being - and many are at risk of not returning to school once they reopen. Available research shows that prevalence of violence against girls and women has increased during the pandemic - jeopardizing their health, safety and overall well-being. As school closures and quarantines were enforced during the 2014‐2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, women and girls experienced more sexual violence, coercion and exploitation. School closures during the Ebola outbreak were associated with an increase in teenage pregnancies. Once schools re-opened, many "visibly pregnant girls" were banned from going back to school. With schools closing throughout the developing world, where stigma around teenage pregnancies prevails, we will probably see an increase in drop-out rates as teenage girls become pregnant or married. As girls stay at home because of school closures, their household work burdens might increase, resulting in girls spending more time helping out at home instead of studying. This might encourage parents, particularly those putting a lower value on girls' education, to keep their daughters at home even after schools reopen. Moreover, research shows that girls risk dropping out of school when caregivers are missing from the household because they typically have to (partly) replace the work done by the missing caregiver, who might be away due to COVID-19-related work, illness, or death. Therefore, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, we might see more girls than boys helping at home, lagging behind with studying, and dropping out of school.

Last Updated: Oct 26, 2021

The World Bank is committed to seeing every girl prosper in her life. Our projects support the education of hundreds of millions of girls and young women across the world. Working through interventions in education, health, social protection, water, infrastructure, and other sectors, we are making an even stronger commitment to support countries in ensuring that every girl receives the quality education she deserves.

Our 180 projects are impacting more than 150 million girls and young women worldwide. Hundreds of millions more have been impacted over the past few decades.

We tackle key barriers that girls and young women face when trying to obtain an education. Guided by evidence on what works for girls' education, our projects use multi-pronged approaches across areas including:
1. Removing barriers to schooling

Addressing financial barriers, through scholarships, stipends, grants, conditional cash transfers

Addressing long distances and lack of safety to and from school by building schools, providing transportation methods for girls to get to school

Addressing a lack of information about returns to girls' education but running community awareness campaigns engaging parents, school leaders, and local community leaders

Working with the community to address and inform on social and cultural norms and perceptions that may prevent girls' education

2. Promoting safe and inclusive schools

By constructing and rehabilitating schools to create safe and inclusive learning environments,

Efforts at the community- and school-levels, and programs to engage the school (including teachers, girls, and boys) in reducing gender-based violence (GBV) and ensuring available mechanisms to report GBV

Support for hygiene facilities and menstrual hygiene management for adolescent girls

3. Improving the quality of education

Investing in teacher professional development, eliminating gender biases in curriculum and teaching practices, and focusing on foundational learning

Adapting teaching and learning materials, and books to introduce gender sensitive language, pictorial aspects, and messaging

4. Developing skills and empowering girls for life and labor market success

Promoting girls' empowerment, skills development programs and social programs

Prioritizing and promoting women in STEM subjects and careers in both traditional and non-traditional sectors

Reducing barriers and providing incentives through scholarships for women to enroll in higher education and TVET programs

Support for childcare programs for women and girls to join the labor market

For more information on our girls' education investment and projects, please read Count Me In: The World Bank Education Global Practice: Improving Education Outcomes for Girls and Women, which highlights our decades-long commitment to girls' education, and showcases how Education GP projects are creating opportunities for girls around the world to succeed in their education and beyond.
Last Updated: Oct 26, 2021

The WBG supports girls' education through a variety of interventions. Our focus on girls' education and wellbeing goes beyond school attendance and learning outcomes - we strive to ensure girls have safe, joyful, and inclusive experience with education systems that set them up for success in life and motivate them to become lifelong learners. This approach, reflected in the current Education portfolio impacting at least 150 million girls and young women, prioritizes investments in four key areas listed below.
1. Removing barriers to girls' schooling

Our projects providing stipends to improve primary and secondary school completion for girls and young women in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Sahel benefit close to half a million girls.

Our Girls Empowerment and Learning for All Project in Angola will use a variety of financial incentives to attract adolescent girls to schools, including scholarships, and new school spaces for girls.

The AGILE (Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment) project in Nigeria is providing conditional cash transfers to households for sending girls to school, removing cost barriers to their education.

The MIQRA (Mali Improving Education Quality and Results for All Project) has a school feeding and nutrition program targeted at retention and attendance for girls in schools.

2. Promoting safe and inclusive schools for girls

In Tanzania, the Bank is supporting the training of a counselor in every school who will provide life-skills training in girls' and boys' clubs - which is important because closing gender gaps is not only about interventions for girls but also for boys.

In Nigeria, female counselors will provide life skills training to about 340,000 girls in safe spaces. Several of our other projects also support the construction of separate sanitary toilets for girls, as well as introducing GBV-reducing and reporting mechanisms in school systems.

3. Improving the quality of education for girls (and boys)

In Ghana, the Accountability and Learning Outcomes Project is conducting teacher training for gender-sensitive instruction, and aims to create guides for teachers to support gender sensitivity in classrooms.

In Honduras, the Early Childhood Education Improvement Project, will create a revised preschool curriculum that will include content on gender equity, inclusion, and violence prevention, as well as training for teachers, including training to combat GBV.

The Girls Empowerment and Quality Education for All Project in Sao Tome & Principe is creating girls' clubs after school, where they are also provided with life skills training, and counseling.

4. Developing skills for life and labor market success for young women

The Nurturing Excellence in Higher Education Project in Nepal is focusing on increasing access to tertiary education for young women from low-income groups, and additional providing scholarships for the poorest applications, alongside communication and advocacy campaigns for more female enrollment in STEM subjects.

The ASSET (Accelerating and Strengthening Skills for Economic Transformation) project in Bangladesh is working to increase the participation of women in skills training programs, and conducting awareness and communications campaigns to address dropout.

In Pakistan, the Higher Education Development project seeks to support women enrolled in STEM programs, with an aim to move them from 2-year to more comprehensive 4-year programs.

The Higher Education Project in Moldova and the Higher Education Modernization Project in Belarus will both support and finance activities to increase enrollment of women in STEM fields. The Côte d'Ivoire Higher Education Development Support Project provides scholarships for women in higher education, and extra tutoring support for females pursuing STEM subjects.

Schemes to increase participation of girls in higher education. Through the Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) project, the Bank has supported increased enrollment of females in masters and PhD programs. The number of female students in ACE centers was 343 in 2014 and is now 3,400 in 2020; a tenfold increase. The Bank is also building the pipeline of female students interested in computer science and engineering programs and retain them.

For more information on our girls' education investment and projects, please read Count Me In: The World Bank Education Global Practice: Improving Education Outcomes for Girls and Women, which highlights our decades-long commitment to girls' education, and showcases how Education GP projects are creating opportunities for girls around the world to succeed in their education and beyond.
Last Updated: Oct 26, 2021

The WBG works closely with governments and other development organizations on girls' education issues to identify and advance interventions that improve girls' education outcomes and provide resources to support countries implementing such initiatives. Partnerships both within and outside of the World Bank are critical to the Education GP's work on girls' education. The Education GP works with other global practices in the Bank to improve girls' education-for example, collaborating with the Water GP for access to sanitation and hygiene in schools, with Social Protection and Jobs GP for challenges related to labor market transition, or Energy GP to improve school safety.

The World Bank collaborates actively with many donors and organizations. As a signatory to the G7 Charlevoix Commitment, the Bank has already committed an estimated $2.5 billion to girls' education in FCV countries as of September 2021-exceeding its pledge of $2.0 billion from 2018 to 2023.

The Education GP:

is collaborating with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office FCDO (UK) about targets and high-level engagement with G7 donors, to support aid and financial commitment for girls' education;

is a member of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Girls' EiE Reference Group, which seeks to further research and advocacy for girls' education in emergencies;

a member of the UNESCO Gender Flagship Reference Group and has provided technical contributions to the UNESCO-commissioned study (December 2020-July 2021); and

is working closely with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) as the implementing agency for 54 percent of the total GPE grants of $3.62 billion, that support girls' education.

is a member of the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI), which comprises over 20 partners representing multilateral, bilateral, civil society, and non-governmental organizations.

collaborated with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) to produce Economic Impacts of Child Marriage, a recent report detailing the effects of child marriage, which was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and GPE.

Last Updated: Oct 26, 2021

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Ensuring that all girls and young women receive a quality education is their human right, a global development priority, and a strategic priority for the World Bank. Achieving gender equality is central to the World Bank Group twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.

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US Teen's Unstoppable Fight for Girl Power

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US Teen's Unstoppable Fight for Girl Power

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Focus on African girls

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Camfed is a non-profit organization dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa through the education of females and the empowerment of young women.

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Malala Yousafzai Continues Fight for Girls' Education. October 2013

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Malala Yousafzai Continues Fight for Girls' Education. October 2013

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Students: Use codes to join classes, and then complete assignments.

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“Global Girls’ Conversation Video Contest” letgirlslead.org.

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“Global Girls’ Conversation Video Contest” letgirlslead.org.

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This is a collection of videos submitted by girls around the world sharing the work
they’ve been doing to make a difference in their communities. Transcripts in English are
included.

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Rise Up Program Manager, Rufaro Kangai is featured in this video which discusses the strategies of C4C Grantee Youth Health Programme (YHP) in preventing NCDs among youth in Kenya.

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“Prasad Praveen’s Story: $5 Changed My Life.” by Prasad Praveen, The PearsonFoundation. girlrising.com. 2012

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“Prasad Praveen’s Story: $5 Changed My Life.” by Prasad Praveen, The PearsonFoundation. girlrising.com. 2012

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Prasad tells her personal story about the importance of education in her life.

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MomentumNation.com is for sale | HugeDomains

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Start using this domain right away. Straightforward domain shopping experience. Quick access to your domain.

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“The Other Malalas” by Anna Leach and Sam O’Neill. theguardian.com. December12, 2013.

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“The Other Malalas” by Anna Leach and Sam O’Neill. theguardian.com. December12, 2013.

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This interactive article interviews twelve young girls around the world about their work
advocating for girls education. Below are listed the best four profiles.

Hannah Godefa
Celeste Dushime
Menuka Gurung
Ana Waqatabu Liganisulu

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The other Malalas: girl activists in the developing world - interactive

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What’s it like to campaign to reduce illiteracy, sexual harassment or teenage pregnancy in your own community and why is it so important that the voices of girls are heard? We ask 12 girls under the age of 20 what they are fighting for and why

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“Girls Gone Activist! How to Change the World Through Education.” byschoolgirlsunite.org. May 2009.

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“Girls Gone Activist! How to Change the World Through Education.” byschoolgirlsunite.org. May 2009.

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Free, downloadable book written through School Girls Unite by youth as a how-to guide
using examples of activist work girls in the organization have done.

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Edited by Joanne Conelly, Gaëlle Dessus, Anna Diarra, et al.
Youth Activism Project, School Girls Unite
118 pages. $16 paperback. Free full-color PDF download.

A few years ago, a small group of seventh-grade girls in Maryland were shocked to learn that their peers in developing countries must pay to attend school. Families in poverty can barely afford their sons' education; daughters as young as 9 get married instead of going to school. Founding School Girls Unite, an organization "to let the whole world know," these girls formed a mission: "Tackling prejudice against girls worldwide and expanding their freedom and opportunities through education."

They found partners in the French-speaking West African nation of Mali, where only 15 in 100 females know how to read. A few of the rare girls attending high school and college in Mali formed a sister organization, Les Filles Unies pour l'Education.

The American group raises money to send 75 girls in Mali to school each year, while the group in Mali visits the sponsored girls' villages to see how they are doing. Both groups inspire others to address the worldwide education problem. They also lobby their national leaders to hasten efforts to fulfill the United Nations Millennium Development Declaration, which promises that gender disparity will be eliminated by 2015, with every child around the world receiving primary schooling.

In her foreword, Wendy Schaetzel Lesko, a leader in civic engagement through her Youth Activism Project, discusses how this collaboration began, with brainstorming among girls she brought together with young African women in the Washington, D.C., area. Lesko is a guiding force as coordinator of School Girls Unite.

In this action guide, 13 contributors from Les Filles Unies and 28 from School Girls Unite explain why educating girls is a key to solving such global problems as poverty, HIV/AIDS, hunger, war and sexism. The book features text in English on the left-hand pages and in French on the right. Black-and-white photographs show both groups in action, along with the children in Mali whom they support. Bulleted lists, bold type and inset quotes from youth make the pages easy to digest.

Clear instruction in basic skills of activism include public-speaking tips; a pep talk on being assertive in promoting your cause; communications etiquette, such as asking the school principal for permission to campaign; fundraising ideas, from selling pencils to putting on an elaborate dance soirée in Mali; getting media attention, like the photo-op the American girls scored with Hillary Clinton; and lobbying.

This treasury of encouragement and strategies can serve as a handbook for any youth-led cause. Videos and links on the girls' website offer more tools for helping others join them in making this girls' education movement global. (800) 543-7693, http://www.schoolgirlsunite.org.

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Girls Gone Activist! How to Change the World Through Education

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Edited by Joanne Conelly, Gaëlle Dessus, Anna Diarra, et al. Youth Activism Project, School Girls Unite 118 pages. $16 paperback. Free full-color PDF download. A few years ago, a small group of seventh-grade girls in Maryland were shocked to learn that their peers in developing countries must pay to attend school.

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US First Lady Michelle Obama is to visit London to highlight her efforts to boost girls' education around the world.

The visit, later in June, is part of the Let Girls Learn initiative.

It comes six years after she delivered an emotional address to pupils at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington, north London.

Mrs Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, and daughters Malia and Sasha will accompany her on the trip.

Her 2009 encounter with the Islington schoolgirls is said to have been a significant inspiration to her taking on a more campaigning role.

She was reunited with them in 2011, when she gave a speech at Oxford University on the second day of President Barack Obama's state visit to the UK.

The US embassy said Mrs Obama would "meet with students and discuss how the UK and the US are working together to expand access to girls' education around the world - supporting adolescent girls in completing their education".

Her trip to Europe will also take in Italy, where she is leading a presidential delegation on health issues and visiting members of the US military and their families stationed in Vicenza.

The aim of the Let Girls Learn initiative is to "encourage and support community-led solutions to reduce barriers that prevent adolescent girls from completing their education".

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US First Lady Michelle Obama is to visit London to highlight her efforts to boost girls' education around the world. The visit, later in June, is part of the Let Girls Learn initiative. It comes six years after she delivered an emotional address to pupils at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington, north London.

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“Girl Up Teens Make a Difference: Exclusive Interview with Annie Gersh” by TabbyBiddle. huffingtonpost.com. January 10, 2012.

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“Girl Up Teens Make a Difference: Exclusive Interview with Annie Gersh” by TabbyBiddle. huffingtonpost.com. January 10, 2012.

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This article interviews Annie Gersh, a teenager advisor to Girl Up, an organization that
recruits American girls toward empowering young women in developing countries

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“Learn the Issue: Girls’ Education.” campaignforusa.org

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“Learn the Issue: Girls’ Education.” campaignforusa.org

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This action topic provides some background information on the issue.

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“Malala Yousafzai Recieves Sakharov, Europe’s Biggest Human Rights Prize.”

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“Malala Yousafzai Recieves Sakharov, Europe’s Biggest Human Rights Prize.”

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This brief article reports on Malala’s receipt of this prize.

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Malala Yousafzai - Info Malala Yousafzai

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Malala Yousafzai - Info Malala Yousafzai

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malala-yousafzai.com Merupakan Blog Informasi Perjuangan Dalam Memperjuangkan pendidikan berserta hak kebahagian korban perang antar negara maupun dalam negara

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Podcast - Education - Child Marriage Numbers Dropping

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Podcast - Education - Child Marriage Numbers Dropping

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Child marriage numbers falling, says Unicef, Africa Today - BBC World Service

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Education for girls has helped reduce the number of child marriages

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Glamour magazine named Malala their woman of the year and in this article tells her
story including background from before she was shot.

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Malala Yousafzai is a Woman of the Year because... "By targeting her, extremists showed what they feared most: a girl with a book. Malala embodies the power of education to build peace. She is truly a role model for the world."
-Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations__
Update: Malala wins the Nobel Peace Prize "

For most of us, her story began on October 9, 2012, the day a young man with a handkerchief over his face boarded a bus filled with 20 singing, chatting girls on their way home from school in the lush Swat Valley of northern Pakistan. "Who is Malala?" the man asked. When the girls unwittingly glanced toward their 15-year-old friend near the back, he lifted a black Colt .45 and fired three shots, sending a bullet through her head.

But who is Malala? Her real story, she told me, started years before.

When Malala Yousafzai-named, fittingly, after Malalai, a female Afghan martyr who died in battle-was born, her father, a teacher named Ziauddin, refused to grieve the way fathers in his culture were expected to upon having daughters; instead, he wrote her into his clan's family tree-a distinction usually reserved for boys. And Malala's sense of justice came young. When, at an early age, she saw children living on a garbage dump, she wrote a letter to God. "Give me strength and courage," she pleaded. "I want to make this world perfect."

Malala's valley had always been conservative; she remembers disliking having to cover her face, and bristling at the fact that while boys and men could walk freely around town, her mother could not go out without a male relative, "even if it was a five-year-old boy!" But real danger only came to her peaceful region when she was 10-in the form of the Taliban. Then, says Malala,"I got afraid. Not of the Taliban, but because they were banning girls' education." Schools closed; many were bombed; bodies of dissenters piled up in a town square. The local Taliban leader used his radio show to congratulate by name those girls who dropped out of school. The school Malala's father ran stayed open, but for safety, it removed its signs and the girls stopped wearing their uniforms, which would have made them targets.

And that's when Malala really became Malala. When a BBC journalist asked her father to recommend a teacher or student willing to document the terror, no one volunteered-except his own daughter. "I thought, What a great opportunity," she recalls. "Terrorism will spill over if you don't speak up." Under the pen name Gul Makai, she wrote frank, detailed diary entries about her life under the Taliban. Though many urged her to stop, and some have since criticized her father for allowing her to do it, Malala wasn't worried. The Taliban, she remembers, "had never come for a girl."

Emboldened, she began giving speeches across Pakistan in favor of education. She won the country's National Peace Prize and met the prime minister, presenting him with a list of demands on behalf of children-rebuilt schools, a girls' college-but keeping her expectations low. "I told myself, 'I shall not wait for any prime minister-when I'm a politician, I will do these things myself,'" she says. Malala led a double life: In one world, she was an Ugly Betty fan known for her spot-on impersonations of teachers and friends; in the other, a rising voice of dissent against terror. She started to realize her work could be risky. "I used to think that one day the Taliban would come [for me]," she told me. "And I thought, What would I do? I said to myself, 'Malala, you must be brave. You must not be afraid of anyone. You are only trying to get an education-you are not committing a crime.' I would even tell [my attacker], 'I want education for your son and daughter.' " Her own mother decided to take classes to learn to read and write.

And then came October 9.

Her parents rushed to her bedside. "My brave daughter, my beautiful daughter," lamented her father, leaning over her. But his brave daughter recovered, thanks in part to two visiting British doctors who were able to take her to a hospital in Birmingham, England. Around the world, women, men, and children prayed for her. Thousands of letters piled up (one addressed simply to "The Girl Shot in the Head, Birmingham"), and people everywhere asked: Would she be okay? Could she lead a normal life again?

It turns out that for Malala, normal was never the goal. In the year since her attack, she has spoken, written, and fought her way into history, becoming the world's leading advocate for educating girls. Not normal-extraordinary.

At the United Nations in July, she brought the general assembly to its feet. "One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world," she said. Since then she has Skyped with Syrian children, written the memoir I Am Malala, charmed Jon Stewart and Barack Obama, and become one of the youngest-ever nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout it all, she has stayed focused: Let girls go to school.

The issue certainly needs a hero right now. Around the world an estimated 66 million girls are being denied the right to an education. Fix that, scholars have long said, and you could change the course of human history. "There's a saying," says Sheryl WuDunn, coauthor of Half the Sky, "that when you educate boys, you educate boys; when you educate girls, you educate a village." Educated girls are safer from sexual assault and childhood marriage; they go on to raise more-educated children themselves. Her Muslim faith, Malala points out, is in her favor: "Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated," she says. "I don't know why the Taliban have forgotten it."

For that sensibility, and for her unstoppable drive to change the world, Malala is Glamour's 2013 Women of the Year Fund honoree. The money raised goes to the project she is most passionate about, The Malala Fund, which aims to help children all over the world get the education that is their birthright. The fund recently made its first grant, supporting the educations of 40 girls in the Swat Valley-an achievement that thrills Malala, who wants to expand to other regions and countries (she cites Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria). "Nothing can happen when half the population is in the Stone Age," she says. "I believe that when women are educated, then you will see this world change."

Malala's own world has changed hugely, from a small town to the global stage. She plans to go to college-Oxford, Cambridge, maybe Harvard, "to learn and learn and learn"-and into politics; one of her heroes is the assassinated Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, whose scarf she wore during that address at the United Nations.

But the place she'd most like to go is home. She misses it dearly. "I miss my room, I miss the traffic-I even miss that garbage dump!" she says. But it's far too dangerous for her there. "We will target her again and attack whenever we have a chance," a Taliban spokesperson told reporters in October. So Malala and her family-her mother, father, and younger brothers Khushal and Atal-are changing the world from abroad. "If Malala can do what she did-take on the Taliban, at risk to her own life," notes 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner (and Woman of the Year) Jody Williams, "then there is really no excuse for the rest of us not to get up off our butts and work to make the world a better place."

The last time I spoke to Malala (by Skype, with her family milling about behind her), I asked her what she wanted Glamour's 12 million readers to know. "You can tell them a story from my imagination!" she said cheerfully. "When God created man and woman, he was thinking, Who shall I give the power to, to give birth to the next human being? And God chose woman. And this is the big evidence that women are powerful. Women are strong. Women can do anything. Come out and struggle for your rights; nothing can happen without your voice.

"Do not wait for me to do something for your rights. It's your world, and you can change it."

__Read more:

* Glamour Women of the Year 2013

* The Malala Fund

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Malala Yousafzai is a Woman of the Year because... "By targeting her, extremists showed what they feared most: a girl with a book. Malala embodies the power of education to build peace. She is truly a role model for the world." -Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations

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"From Activist to Author" Forbes Magazine. June 13, 2017

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"From Activist to Author" Forbes Magazine. June 13, 2017

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This article highlights how Marley Dias saw a need for more books about black characters and became an activist then an author.

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When Marley Dias was 11 years old, she was a voracious reader. But she was sick of the books she was being given in school because, as she'll tell you, they were all about white boys and their dogs. And so, she set about changing that.

In November 2015, Dias launched a campaign called #1000BlackGirlBooks. Her goal was simple: collect and donate 1,000 books that feature black girls as the main character. Today, Dias has accumulated more than 9,000 books and has landed a book deal of her own.

At the annual Forbes' Women Summit in New York City Tuesday, Dias reflected on how she was able to turn her frustration by the books she was seeing in school -- stuff more along the lines of Shiloh than I Love My Hair -- into a genuine movement.

"Frustration is fuel that can lead to the development of an innovative and useful idea," she said, noting that only after she conducted some research did she realize just how few books had black girls or girls of color as their lead character, and how she might not be the only person frustrated by the lack of representation in children's books.

"I had a lot of choices about how I was going to address this problem. Option 1: focus on me, get myself more books; have my dad take me to Barnes and Noble and just be done, live my perfect life in suburban New Jersey. Option 2: find some authors, beg them to write more black girl books so I'd have some of my own, special editions, treat myself a bit," she said. "Or, option 3: start a campaign that collect books with black girls as the main characters, donate them to communities, develop a resource guide to find those books, talk to educators and legislators about how to increase the pipeline of diverse books, and lastly, write my own book, so that I can see black girl books collected and I can see my story reflected in the books I have to read."

Dias, of course, went with option 3, and her effort is much needed in the world of children's literature. According to an analysis from the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just 8.4% of 3,400 trade books published in the U.S. in 2016 had an African American main character. The numbers got even smaller when they looked for protagonists of Latino, American Indian or Asian/Pacific descent: just 55 books, or 1.6%, featured a Native American character in a starring role; 169, or roughly 5%, had a Latino protagonist; and 239, or 7%, were about a character of Asian/Pacific descent.

"This gaps hurts all of us," Dias said Tuesday. "I'm working to create a space where it feels easy to include and imagine black girls and make black girls like me the main characters of our lives."

Educators, advocates, and even Hollywood auteurs agree with Dias' assessment.

"In the history of storytelling, you always want that main character to be you," Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins said in a conversation earlier in the day on Tuesday.

Or, as the CCBC put it in its analysis: "The more books there are, especially books created by authors and illustrators of color, the more opportunities librarians, teachers, and parents and other adults have of finding outstanding books for young readers and listeners that reflect dimensions of their lives, and give a broader understanding of who we are as a nation."

Dias' book, "Marley Dias Gets It Done -- And So Can You," will come out in January 2018. In the meantime, Dias will keep working to fill the gaps in children's books and taking inspiration from the stories she loves. Though, if the audience's enthusiastic response to her remarks Tuesday morning were any indication, the best inspiration comes from Dias herself.

"Innovation comes from, one, acknowledging yourself; two, studying and understanding the problem and three, finding a solution," she said. "It's a typical adventure in a hero story, which I now live today."

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From Activist To Author: How 12-Year-Old Marley Dias Is Changing The Face Of Children's Literature

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At the annual Forbes' Women Summit in New York City Tuesday, 12-year-old founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks Marley Dias reflected on how she was able to turn her frustration by the books she was seeing in school -- stuff more along the lines of Shiloh than I Love My Hair -- into a genuine movement.

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This article from Time Magazine for Kids, is about Malala’s heroic journey of healing after being shot by the Taliban for advocating for gender quality in education. 

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This article from Time Magazine for Kids, is about Malala’s heroic journey of healing after being shot by the Taliban for advocating for gender quality in education. 

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A web page that describes women and girls from across the world inspired by Malala Yousafazi to carry on the fight for equal educational rights.

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Malala Yousafazi, “A Heroic Return.” By TIME for Kids. Time for Kids.com. March 20, 2013.

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Malala Yousafazi, “A Heroic Return.” By TIME for Kids. Time for Kids.com. March 20, 2013.

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This article from Time Magazine for Kids, is about Malala’s heroic journey of healing after being shot by the Taliban for advocating for gender quality in education.