News Desk |
Pakistani education activist and youngest Nobel Laureate participated in the social media’s immensely top trend ’10-year Challenge’. Currently, 21-year old, the activist recalled her time in her hometown Swat Valley ten years back when she was 11-years old. She wrote about the battles she had fought ten years back that has completely changed her life.
In a blog post, the female education activist wrote that the #10YearChallenge taking over her social media feeds reignited what her own life was like at the time: “The posts sparked my memories of 10 years ago when I was 11 years old. A frightening voice on the radio, spreading across the valley! “From January 15, girls will not be allowed to attend schools,” said Mullah Shah Doran, a local Taliban leader. “Educating girls is ‘un-Islamic.'”, she wrote.
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“We were living in terrorism and violence,” she said adding: “And now no girl could go to school.” The Mother Teresa Award recipient went on to write: “As an 11-year-old, I worried about my future and my freedom. All I wanted was to put on my ink-stained scarf, walk through the streets, sit on our old wooden chairs inside those cracked walls, pick my pen, and open my book.”
She also talked about the diary entries she wrote ten years back. “Reading these entries now, 10 years later, I hear so much in that young girl’s voice — skepticism, nostalgia, hope, and caution. The same feelings that I hear in the voices of the girls that I meet around the world, in schools, on city streets, in refugee camps,” she added further.
“I look back on the last 10 years with immense gratitude — but also anger. Why are so many girls — any girl — still out of school?” She said that her will to promote female education has not dimmed with time but has strengthened.
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“I am working every day to help my sisters go to school. I want every girl to get at least 12 years of safe, free, quality education. I want them to pursue their dreams and contribute to a better world for all of us. But I can’t do this alone.”, she added further. Concluding her note, she wrote, “What will the next 10 years look like? That’s up to all of us.”