Apple CEO and Malala Yousafzai Team Up to Send 100,000 Girls to School
Apple CEO Tim Cook has teamed up with the world’s youngest Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in a collaboration that will send 100,000 girls to school.
Yousafzai has been an activist since she was 10 years old, blogging from her native Pakistan for the BBC about Taliban infiltration in her homeland. In 2012 at the age of 15, she was targeted and shot in the head by the Taliban on her way to school. Despite critical injuries, Yousafzai recovered and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and create the Malala Fund, an organization that supports educational programs for girls in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Nigeria.
Tim Cook first met Yousafzai while visiting Oxford, where the 20-year-old is currently studying. The two hit it off immediately.
“We began to talk and it became so clear that she had such a bold vision,” Cook told The Independent. “It really lined up with the boldness of Apple and that the core of it is an overriding belief in equality and that education is the great equalizer.”
That conversation has led to a powerful partnership. In a press release Monday, Apple announced it would partner with the Malala Fund, assisting with technology, educational curriculum, and policy research that will help girls the world over get access to 12 years of free education.
Though a specific dollar amount has not been specified, Apple’s support means the Malala Fund will double the number of grants it awards and will allow it to extend their funding programs to India and Latin America.
The first joint goal of Apple and Malala is to bring secondary education opportunities to 100,000 girls. With some 130 million girls still going without the education they deserve, it’s a partnership that should be celebrated — and duplicated. You hear that, Microsoft? (And Amazon, and Google, and…)
What do you think of Malala’s partnership with Apple? Tell us @BritandCo.
(Photo via Dan Kitwood/Getty)
