Struggle for education: Malala to build school, college in Shangla

Students of Shahpur arrange telephonic speech to honour their hometown girl

SHANGLA: Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai announced on Thursday to build a school and a college in the Shangla district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. 

“Hundreds of children are without education in my hometown. Soon I will construct a standard college and school for them,” Malala said in a telephonic speech to students at her ancestral village, Shahpur, in Shangla on Thursday.

Malala was born in 1997 in the Shangla district where she spent her childhood till her parents migrated to the adjacent district of Swat.

The students of Government High School Shahpur had arranged the event to pay tribute to their hometown girl.

Malala, talking to the students via telephone, said she still remembers and misses Shangla. She said that it was her childhood wish that all the children in her village get education and no one should be left out. “I am sorry that in my hometown there are so many without education. Not that they don’t want education, but because they don’t have schools,” Malala said and explained that she has dedicated all her funds for the education and she has started this step from Shangla by taking academic tests of 25 children and that she will afford all the education expenses of those children.

She said that all other basic facilities will be provided to children in Khpal Koor Model School.

Malala’s uncle, Syed Ramaz, who was present at the event, shared with the students the struggle of his niece for education.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2014.