"I am scared of ghosts, not Taliban", vows Malala
- October 21, 2013, 7:29 pm
- National News
- 81 Views
LONDON Oct 21 (Online): Girls education campaigner Malala Yousafzai said she isn t scared of new threats from the Taliban.
Speaking in her first interview with an Indian media network, Malala Yousafzai said she is "scared of ghosts, not Taliban."
Malala Yousafzai, a global icon for world leaders and citizens alike, said she sees herself just as an ordinary teenage girl.
She said her world may have changed but she has not.
Recounting the horror of being shot at point blank, a bullet almost going through her brain - all because she spoke up for the rights of young girls to go to school, Malala said her first thought waking up in a hospital in Birmingham was how she or her family would pay for the treatment.
What if the Taliban targets her life again? Malala says she isn t scared by their new threats.
"I may be scared of ghosts," she said, "never of the Taliban."
Meanwhile he 16-year-old Pakistani teen targeted for a Taliban assassination because she championed education for girls has inspired the development of a school curriculum encouraging advocacy.
George Washington University announced Monday that faculty members are creating multimedia curriculum tools to accompany a book recently released by the teen, Malala Yousafzai. Several faculty members will pilot the curriculum early next year for both college and high school instruction. Free of charge, it will focus on themes such as the importance of a woman s voice and political extremism, the university said.
The tools won t just look at the teen s story, but also how the same issues get reflected elsewhere, such as when girls face child marriage and pressures to leave school, said Mary Ellsberg, the director of the university s Global Women s Institute.
"It s going to be really interactive and really encourage students to do ... activities outside of school, it will encourage them to get engaged in the communities and as well to help the Malala Fund directly," Ellsberg said.
The university s Global Women s Institute is partnered with the Malala Fund, a nonprofit that seeks to ensure girls around the world have access to education.
In 2012 when a Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking Malala and other children home from school in Pakistan s volatile northern Swat Valley and shot Malala in the head and neck. Another girl on the bus was also wounded. Malala now resides in Britain, where she was flown for medical care. Her memoir is "I am Malala."
