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Malala Yousafzai joins Instagram to celebrate 21st birthday

A gift for us all.

Nicole Gallucci

on July 12, 2018

Nobel Prize-winning activist Malala Yousafzai is celebrating her 21st birthday in style.

Yousafzai turned 21 on Thursday, and created an Instagram account to announce she's spending her milestone birthday in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

"Hi, Instagram! So happy to be celebrating my 21st birthday in #Brazil!" she captioned her first post.

View this post on Instagram

According to a press release, the activist is in Brazil meeting with local girls and hearing their personal stories along with vlogger Juanpa Zurita, humanitarian and social media celeb Jerome Jarre, and journalist Elaine Welteroth.

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Zurita and Welteroth have already shown Malala some serious birthday love, welcoming her to the platform with heartfelt posts, and sharing photos and videos celebrating Malala Day.

Two years ago we started Love Army from a place of unconditional Love. Unconditional Love means giving without expecting something in return. Today we joined Malala in Brazil to learn about her work for girl’s education. Malala has been supporting, from a place of unconditional Love, many initiatives around the world that help girls receive quality education. Both Jérôme & I being men, we didn’t necessarily grow up aware of what it really means to be a woman, or of the prejudice that often comes with it. We are honored to now have the best teacher in the world for this and hungry to learn how we also can play a role in this fight for girls’ education. We don’t think this fight is only for women. Men also can be working hard for girl’s rights, men also can fight for equality, and men also can help each other not fall into the pool and drink coconut water (SWIPE). Sending unconditional love, from Malala, Jérôme & Juanpa ♥️

A post shared by Juanpa Zurita (@eljuanpazurita) on Jul 11, 2018 at 11:47am PDT

So excited to finally share why I am in beautiful Brazil: It’s #MALALADAY. This girls education activist, global humanitarian, fighter for equality, inspirational icon, and college student turns 21 today! And I could not feel more HONORED to celebrate it with her in the Afro-Brazilian + indigenous communities of Brazil where @malalafund is making its latest investment in ending the girls education crisis. Today, 1.5 million girls are denied the right to education in Brazil. 1.5million!! While that number is shocking, unfortunately it’s only a small slice of the 130 million girls globally who are facing the same injustices. The positive news is this means the goal to END the crisis in Brazil is ACHIEVABLE, and IN OUR LIFETIME. We are here meeting with the inspiring young girls and local female activists who are doing the work every day to support the most marginalized black and brown girls in Brazil. My heart is so full and I am so grateful to be on this journey with you, Malala! So much more to share but for now, pls join me in singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY (feliz aniversário) to this queen!!!👸🏽Oh, and let’s all welcome her to IG, which she opened up this morning as her birthday gift: @malala. 🎁

A post shared by Elaine Welteroth (@elainewelteroth) on Jul 12, 2018 at 5:48am PDT

At the time of writing, Yousafzai has already gained over 32,000 Instagram followers and is following six accounts, including her three travel pals, The Malala Fund, Farah Mohamed, The Malala Fund's CEO, and the National Geographic account.

In the past, the young activist — who was shot by a member of the Taliban at the age of 14 fighting for girls' education — has used social media as a positive and informative way to communicate on issues that are dear to her.

On Yousafzai's last day of high school in June 2017, she joined Twitter and has since amassed an impressive 1.3 million followers. She's also started taking classes at Oxford University and continues to advocate for women's education. In January, Yousafzai teamed up with Tim Cook in hopes of providing 100,000 girls around the world with secondary education opportunities.

Happy birthday, Malala! We look forward to seeing the inspirational 'grams to come.

Topics Activism Instagram Social Media

Nicole Gallucci

Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.