Hundreds of California Lutheran University students gathered May 9 to hear, as President John Nunes described it, the power of one voice that refused to be silenced.
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for girls’ education and the youngest laureate for the Peace Prize in Nobel history, told students at Samuelson Chapel that hope is not something to wait for but something to choose.
She told them that their voices and actions carry power; they don’t need to have all the answers to collectively take a small step forward that will make the world better for the next generation.
“Hope is the choices that we make in our life,” Yousafzai said. “If you stay ambitious, you will create hope and lead toward the change that you want to see.”
The private event was moderated by Andrea Brimmer, a CLU alumna, and Julie Uhrman, co-founder of the Angel City Football Club that practices on campus. Students in the audience also asked Yousafzai questions.
The Nobel laureate said she became an activist at 11 years old, when the Taliban took control of Pakistan’s Swat Valley and banned her and the other girls who lived there from attending school.
At first, she felt hopeless, but she soon decided to defy the order and continue to attend school. She spoke out publicly against the terrorist regime and detailed her experiences for the BBC.
“I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine a life without education.”
Yousafzai eventually became a target. On Oct. 9, 2012, when she was 15 years old, a Taliban gunman stopped her school bus and shot her in the head.
When she woke up from a coma 10 days later in a British hospital, she realized her life had a purpose: to fight for every girl’s right to an education.
Since the assassination attempt, she has often feared for the safety of herself and her family, and she initially struggled to understand how she could feel so afraid at the same time the world praised her for her bravery. But she learned that bravery is not the absence of fear.
“Bravery is when you keep doing what you believe even when you are afraid,” Yousafzai said.
Through her nonprofit, the Malala Fund, Yousafzai said she has reformed more than 20 policies and secured billions of dollars in education funding, increasing girls’ access to education around the world.
There are still, however, more than 120 million girls out of school today.
She said she views setbacks — such as the COVID-10 pandemic, climate disasters and the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan — as reminders that more work needs to be done, and The Malala Fund has pledged to invest $50 million over the next five years to empower education activists.
Yousafzai’s latest venture is Recess Capital, an investment firm dedicated to advancing gender equality by funding girls’ and women’s sports.
“I want to see recess looking very different for the next generation of girls,” Yousafzai said, recalling how she and her female classmates were never allowed to play cricket with their male counterparts. “Girls are not born with self-doubt; they’re told to doubt themselves, and sports instill so much empowerment.”
She said she views sports as part of education, and though girls’ and women’s sports have incredible potential, they are consistently undervalued and underinvested in.
Her ultimate goal, Yousafzai said, is to wake up in a world where no girl is denied the opportunity to choose her own future.
“It’s so important to dream big, even if it seems unrealistic,” she said.
She encouraged Cal Lutheran students to do the same.
Makena Huey is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at makena.huey@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Malala Yousafzai speaks at CLU. Here’s how she’s inspiring students
Reporting by Makena Huey, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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