He Named Her Malala

Children often grow up in the shadow of their parents but few adults reside in shade cast by their children. For a Pakistani man’s life and public achievements to be dwarfed when compared with their daughter, is less likely again. This is the lot of Ziauddin Yousafzai, father to the woman our world knows simply as Malala, and he is more than content with how things have turned out.

I’m seated on a small and delicate chair in a large, ornate house and surrounded by the kind of people who have lots of money but who spend it in ways the rest of us wish all people with money would. Philanthropists and benefactors – and their teenage daughters – are sitting, quietly waiting to hear from newly minted author Yousafzai. This afternoon he will tell them that the single best use of their charitable dollar is to invest in the education of girls. Data shows that when you give a girl in the developing world the means to support herself, she returns that benefit to her community four times over.