Harvard University selects Malala Yousafzai for 2018 Gleitsman Award for promoting girls’ education

Harvard University (US) has selected Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai (20) for its 2018 Gleitsman Award in recognition of her work promoting girls’ education. She will be presented with this award at December 6, 2018 ceremony. The Gleitsman Award provides US $125,000 for activism that has improved quality of life around the world.

Malala Yousafzai

Malala was born on 12 July 1997 in Mingora city in Swat province of Pakistan. At the age of 11 she had caught international attention as female education activist after writing for the BBC about life under the Taliban in Pakistan under pseudonym Gul Makai. Her campaign had led to Taliban assassination attempt near that left her severely wounded after she was shot in head in 2012. Later she had founded nonprofit Malala Fund to support her work. At present she is student at Oxford University in England.
Awards and Honours: In 2014, at the age of 17 she was awarded Nobel peace prize, becoming youngest Nobel Laureate in the history of Nobel award. She had shared this award with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi. She also has been honoured with National Youth Peace Prize (2011), Mother Teresa Awards for Social Justice (2012), Simon de Beauvoir Prize (2013), Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (2013), Anna Politkovskaya Award (2013). United Nations in her honour has declared 12 July as ‘Malala Day’.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2018