Malala Yousafzai at just 22-years-old can count being the youngest Nobel Prize Peace Prize winner and now graduate of Oxford University on her long list of credentials. The young activist, known for her campaigning for female education, has finished her degree at the prestigious institution, and like all graduates, is looking forward to some “sleep and Netflix”.
Over the weekend, Yousafzai shared pictures to her social media which showed her celebrating with cake and balloons covered in paint and confetti (per tradition for Oxford students on the last day of their exams). Yousafzai was studying politics, economics and philosophy.
“Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford. I don’t know what’s ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading and sleep,” she said.
When she was just 11, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pen name for the BBC about living under the rule of the Pakistani Taliban. After being targeted for her campaign against efforts to deny women education, she survived being shot in the head in 2012.
At the age of 17, in 2014, she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy. Through her Malala Fund, she has also become a global symbol of the resilience of women in the face of repression.
“Like many of you, the pandemic has changed a lot about my final year of university,” she wrote in a post to graduates in the Malala Fund’s digital newsletter for young women, Assembly, speaking about how her brothers kept interrupting her studies.
“It’s hard not to think about all the moments we’re missing. But we didn’t miss out on the most important thing: our education.”
Earlier this year, Yousafzai met with fellow activist Greta Thunberg for the first time.
At the time, Thunberg shared a photograph of the duo on Instagram alongside the touching caption: “So…today I met my role model. What else can I say? @malala”.
Much like Yousafzai, Thunberg started her activism career at an early age. She was just 15-years-old when she kickstarted a global youth-based climate change movement after staging a protest outside of Swedish parliament back in 2018.
Congratulations Malala!
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