Ziauddin Yousafzai is an educator, human rights campaigner and social activist. He hails from Pakistan's Swat Valley where, at great personal risk among grave political violence, he peacefully resisted the Taliban's efforts to shut down schools and kept open his own school. He also inspired his daughter, Malala Yousafzai, to raise her voice to promote the rights of children to an education. Ziauddin is the co-founder and serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Malala Fund.
He also serves as the United Nations Special Advisor on Global Education and also the educational attaché to the Pakistani Consulate in Birmingham, UK.
“Ziauddin ... set up a school where girls could study as well as boys, in a part of the world where the gender gap in education is vast.” — Guardian, October 7, 2013
TEDGlobal 2014 has wrapped up — here, some highlights from the last day of the conference. Onstage and online, it’s been a busy and fantastic Friday. Word spreads of Malala Yousafzai’s Nobel Peace Prize. Excitement was high at TEDGlobal this morning when the news came out that the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize had gone jointly to Pakistani education activist […]
Continue reading“The Next Chapter” is already fascinating — full of great characters, plot twists and, hopefully, it’s all leading toward a happy ending. Today, we kicked off TED2014 — our 30th-anniversary conference — which will chew on this theme, offering intriguing ideas on where we are going next. So what happened in day one? Below, some highlights. […]
Continue readingIn October 2012, a Taliban-affiliated gunman shot Ziauddin Yousafzai’s daughter Malala soon after she boarded a bus en route to her school. In Swat, Pakistan — where Ziauddin and Malala live — the Taliban had outlawed all girls from attending school — but Yousafzai, an educator and steadfast crusader for women’s rights in Pakistan, refused […]
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