Malala Yousafzai
~ Activist ~
By daring to go to school as a young teen, Malala defied Pakistani extremists and their violent attacks and became a global icon for the importance of educating girls. Because of Malala’s heroic and eloquent statements for girls’ education, she was awarded at age 17 the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2014. “I don't want to be thought of as the ‘girl who was shot by the Taliban’ but the ‘girl who fought for education’," she said. “This is the cause to which I want to devote my life.” She is the founder of the Malala Fund, which advocates for international, national and local level policy and system changes that give girls access to a high quality education.
Michelle Obama
~ Former First Lady of the US ~
Michelle Obama has frequently championed the value of educating girls worldwide and, in 2015, unveiled “Let Girls Learn," a new U.S. initiative to support community-focused girls' education across the globe. The project drew on 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers to support hundreds of new community projects that help girls go to school and stay in school. “Girls are our change-makers -- our future doctors and teachers and entrepreneurs,” the First Lady said at the White House launch. “They’re our dreamers and our visionaries who could change the world as we know it.”
Hillary Clinton
~ Former US Secretary of State ~
In 2014, Hillary Clinton launched the Collaborative for Harnessing Ambition and Resources for Girls Education (Girls CHARGE) alongside Julia Gillard, Board Chair of the Global Partnership for Education. The five-year initiative committed $600 million to enable 14 million girls around the globe to go to school. Also, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton established the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, whose mandate included increasing out-of-school girls’ access to primary education. "We know when girls have equal opportunities to primary and secondary school, cycles of poverty are broken, economies grow, glass ceilings are cracked and potential unleashed," she said at the launch of Girls CHARGE.
Emma Watson
~ Actress ~
Emma Watson is a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. In that role, she has launched the HeForShe campaign, which seeks to engage men and boys in removing the social and cultural barriers that prevent women and girls' full participation in society. As she said at a UN Women event in September 2014, “We don't often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.”
