Apple’s Tim Cook joins his ‘hero’ Malala Yousafzai to fund global education for girls

Apple CEO Tim Cook and young education activist Malala Yousafzai met with Lebanese and Syrian students in Beirut, Lebanon, over the weekend and heard firsthand the stories of young girls being kept out of school.

One girl said her father demanded she drop out of school.

“He just wants me to stay at home,” she said, according to ABC News. “He believes a woman’s place is in the home.”

Yousafzai, who has heard that story from girls around the world, offered to help.

“I will definitely talk to your father, but also you must say no. OK?” she told the girl. “You must always say no and never say yes. Don’t be afraid.”

Cook met Yousafzai, the self-described “campaigner for girls’ education” and Nobel Peace Prize winner, just three months ago.

But on Monday, the two announced they will work together to champion “every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education.” Cook pledged Apple money and technology to Yousafzai’s work.

“The Malala Fund just got a big infusion of cash from a high profile donor,” Fortune reported. Apple did not disclose the size of the contribution.

Apple’s support will allow the philanthropic Malala Fund to double the number of grants it awards for girls’ secondary education in India and Latin America, with a goal to help more than 100,000 students, according to Fortune.

The fund’s network supports programs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey and Nigeria.

Apple will be the fund’s first Laureate partner, and Cook will join the Malala Fund’s leadership council.

“Some say they want to become doctors and teachers and engineers and artists and musicians,” Yousafzai told ABC News of the girls she meets. “Once you hear that, you say they deserve this future. And this future is only possible through education.

“Girls have pressure from their families, from their societies and so many obstacles in their fight for the kind of education that is taken for granted in many Western countries.

“And these girls are fighting for it, each and every day.”

She and Cook estimate 130 million girls in the world have no access to high-quality education.

“One hundred and thirty million girls is a lot of folks around the world, and so this is a bold ambition,” Cook told ABC. “This is exactly what Apple loves to work on and is something that everybody is saying is impossible.”

People around the world know and respect Yousafzai’s inspirational story.

She grew up with a love of books and learning in Swat Valley, Pakistan, often referred to as the “Switzerland of Asia.” Taliban militants took over the valley in 2007, banning things such as TVs and playing music. They executed people who broke the new rules, according to her biography on Malala.org.

In December 2008, the Taliban banned girls from going to school. But Yousafzai would have none of that. She began blogging for the BBC under a pen name about life under the Taliban, making herself a target.

She continued to champion the right for girls to attend school after her family moved to another part of the country. In October 2012, a Taliban gunman raided her school bus and shot her in the head. She was 15 at the time.

She was treated in the United Kingdom and five months later went back to school.

The attack propelled her onto a larger international stage, and her advocacy intensified. She met with world leaders. She spent her 18th birthday opening a secondary school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon.

In December 2014 she became the youngest-ever Nobel Laureate. She invited girls from Syria, Nigeria and Pakistan to attend the Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

She is 20 now and studying philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford, where Cook met her while he was on a business trip to England.

He became a quick fan.

“She has a rare trait of courage with a big C,” Cook told ABC. “My heroes in life were people with enormous courage, who were willing to do everything, including risk their lives, for their cause and purpose. She has done this at a very young age, and it’s just amazing.”

In Beirut, they heard stories about how girls are denied education, like the girl whose father made her leave school.

Another girl spoke of her dreams to become an architect, a profession she chose on the same day she and her family fled Syria. She hasn’t been back to school since, she said, crying.

Yousafzai is scheduled to speak Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This story was originally published January 22, 2018 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Apple’s Tim Cook joins his ‘hero’ Malala Yousafzai to fund global education for girls."