“THIS new year I made a goal to read 84 books in 2021,” wrote Pakistani education activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on Instagram in January. She also urged others to join her @literati book club.

In early January this year, the then US president Donald Trump signed off on the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act. Under the Act, the US Agency of International Development (USAID) will be awarding 50 per cent of the merit and needs-based scholarship programmes across a wide range of academic disciplines to Pakistani women who meet the existing eligibility criteria.

Last year also marked the opening of the Malala Yousafzai Elementary School (referred to as Malala Elementary) in Fort Bend County, Texas. It is operated by the Fort Bend Independent School District (FBISD).

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at the prestigious University of Oxford.

On June 19, 2020, it was announced that she had completed her final exams at university.

The 23-year-old was reportedly a regular at the weekly Port and Policy meetings organised by the university’s Conservative Association – which was former prime minister Theresa May’s favourite haunt when she was studying at Oxford in the 1970s – and known for her attendance at socials with the university’s Hindu Society, Polo Club, Christian Union and Islamic Society. And, like any typical student, she sometimes

starts her assignments later than recommended.

Yousafzai first rose to prominence when she wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC Urdu service during the Taliban rule, using the platform to campaign for girls’ rights to an education.

As her efforts became more recognised, a then-15-year-old Yousafzai received death threats by the Taliban. In 2012, she was shot in the head by a masked Taliban gunman.

It was feared she would not live but miraculously by January 2013, she had recovered,