14 year old child activist and icon of hope Malala Yousafzai

Birth Date:  1998

Malala Yousafzai is a school student from the town of Mingora in Swat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwestern Pakistan. She is known for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Tehrik-e-Taliban regime had banned girls from attending school in 2009. During that period, at the age of 11, Yousafzai came to prominence through a blog she wrote for the BBC, detailing her life under the Taliban regime, their attempts to take control of the valley and her views on promoting education for girls. This confrontation would later require the Pakistani military to intervene, and eventually culminate in the expulsion of the Taliban from Swat Valley.Yousafzai has since been nominated for several awards, and has won Pakistan's first National Peace Prize.

On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by a Taliban gunman while returning home in a school bus.

Awards:

After Yousafzai‘s BBC blogging identity was revealed, she was recognized by several organizations for her courage.

• 2011 - International Children's Peace Prize – The Dutch international children's advocacy group KidsRights Foundation included Yousafzai as one of five nominees worldwide for the prize, the first Pakistani girl ever nominated for the award. She was the runner-up.

• 19 December 2011 Pakistan’s National Peace Prize - Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani awarded Yousafzai with Pakistan's first National Peace Prize for those under 18 years old — subsequently renamed the National Malala Peace Prize.Speaking to the media after attending the proceedings, Yousafzai expressed her wish to form her own political party comprising people working for the cause of education, saying “my party will operate in all four provinces.” On Yousafzai’s request, the prime minister directed the authorities to set up an IT campus in the Swat Degree College for Women.

• 3 January 2012 - The Government Girls Secondary School, Mission Road, was renamed to Malala Yousufzai Government Girls Secondary School in her honour.