Hey! Do you want to change the world? Then you must learn to stand for something, so you don’t fall for anything. Great Leaders who have engineered social change in history and up till now have stood for something. What do you stand for?
You might want to take a cue from Malala Yousafzai. Do you even know her? Let me tell you a bit about her. She was born 12 July 1997, that means, she is very young, she is19! And at 19, she is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. That should inspire you!
According to Wikipedia, Malala is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai’s advocacy has since grown into an international movement.
The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured Yousafzai as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”. She was the winner of Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize, and the recipient of the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In July that year, she spoke at the headquarters of the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, and in October the Government of Canada announced its intention that its parliament confer Honorary Canadian citizenship upon Yousafzai. In February 2014, she was nominated for the World Children’s Prize in Sweden. In May 2014, Yousafzai was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Later in 2014, Yousafzai was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi, for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Aged 17 at the time, Yousafzai became the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. Amazing!
Later in 2012, a Taliban gunman shot Yousafzai as she rode home on a bus after taking an exam in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in an attempt to terminate her life and much later when she recovered, she said, “I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right”. She is a die-hard when it comes to education just like Nelson Mandela who said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.
It would be a wise idea for you to further study about the life of this young chap, you would be amazed at her trail blazing efforts in the crux of 2013 and 2014. She believes that one teacher, one book, one pen and one child can change the world, who knows, you might be that child, a grown-up child though. Cheers!