Malala Yousafzai's new YouTube series spotlights inspiring girls
Malala Yousafzai is a fierce champion for girls, and she's using her new YouTube series to spotlight a few of the young women from around the world who inspire her.
"Roll Call" launched this week on the Malala Fund channel as an eight-episode series that will feature girls from Iraq, India, Japan, Syria, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
The first video, a 5-minute vlog with commentary from Yousafzai, focuses on the story of Nibras Khudaida, a 20-year-old college student who fled the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014 and resettled in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Khudaida shares footage of herself talking about yearning to get an education, something that wasn't guaranteed for her in Iraq. While strolling on Creighton University's campus, where she attends school, Khudaida tells the camera, "Coming here, I wanted to be more involved. I wanted to do everything. I didn't want anything — my gender, nothing — stopping me from what I wanted to do."
Her desire for an education was so strong that, when she lived temporarily as a refugee in Ebril, Turkey, she and her father travelled back to their hometown to retrieve her academic transcript in order to enroll in a local school, according to a profile of Khudaida in Creighton University magazine.
She first came to the United States in 2015 and didn't speak any English at the time. These days, she's working toward becoming an international human rights lawyer and counts Amal Clooney as one of her role models.
It's no wonder that Yousafzai wants to bring Khudaida's story to the YouTube masses. And if the first video is any indication of what's to come, "Roll Call" is bound to leave viewers feeling empowered and inspired.
Topics Activism Social Good
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
