Malala to fund Pakistan school project with Angelina Jolie

A fund set up by Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education, is to send 40 girls to school in her home region with the support of US actress Angelina Jolie.

Malala, 15, announced the fund’s first project in a video message late on Thursday to the Women in the World Conference in New York from Britain, where she was sent for surgery after the attack on her school bus last October.

She said the US$45,000 grant, raised with the help of Jolie and two women’s charities, would send 40 girls aged between five and 12 to school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where she is from.

“Announcing the first grant of the Malala Fund is the happiest moment in my life,” Malala said.

“Let us turn the education of 40 girls into 40 million girls.”

The location and name of the project will not be released for security reasons, the Malala Fund said.

It will provide a safe place to study as well as financial support for the families of the girls, who the fund said would otherwise be engaged in domestic labour or possibly sent to work.