Google Announces Fund Supporting Education for Girls
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Megan Smith, vice president of new business development at Google, has announced the creation of a fund to advocate for girls education and empowerment. The funding effort is called the MalalaFund, in honor of Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old student and education activist in Pakistan who survived an assassination attempt by a Taliban gunman who shot her in the head and neck while she was riding home in a school bus in early October.
After being unresponsive for three days, Malala awoke and began the road to recovery, with doctors reporting it was miraculous she survived the attack and even more amazing that she did not suffer any major brain or nerve damage. The activist has already returned to her studies, reading school books in her hospital bed.
The fund, housed at www.malalafund.org, was announced Nov. 10, as the United Nations (UN) recently declared the day to be Malala Day.
Malala and her father, Ziauddin Yousafzaih, a school owner and fellow educational activist, have become international symbols for young women’s education. Malala began writing a blog for the BBC about her life under Taliban rule at the age of 11, promoting education for girls. A New York Times documentary about her life turned the young girl into an internationally known activist, who has been nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by Desmond Tutu and won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace prize.
Former British Prime Minister and current UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown launched a United Nations petition and associated website demanding that all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015. The website for the effort is www.iamMalala.org.
On the topic of the new fund, Smith explained, “Our goal is to provide Malala with a fund she can direct so when she is well and ready, she can pursue her vision for girls education and empowerment.”
The fund is hosted by Vital Voices, a non-government organization focused on fostering global leadership among girls and women. Once volunteers at Harvard Kennedy School created an Indigogo site to serve as a family support fund to help cover Yousafzai’s medical bills, the focus turned to supporting her cause. The effort mirrors an idea Yousafzai voiced herself.
The website launched by Brown explains, “just a few weeks before her shooting she told her friends that her aim was to set up the Malala Foundation to campaign for the 32 million girls round the world who are not at school.”
Interested parties can donate through the website, www.malalafund.org, or by texting “BRAVE” to 27722 to donate $10. Letters can also be sent to the recovering activist through GirlUp.org.