Discussion with Shiza Shahid, Founder and CEO of the Malala Fund - Extra Credits

I attended an event called 'Discussion with Shiza Shahid, Founder and CEO of the Malala Fund' on Tuesday morning in Grainger at 8.30am. I was surprised to see that there were more than 70 people attending the event. Shiza Shahid was a Stanford graduate and was also recently named the 30 People Under 30 Changing the World. Shiza Shahid was born in the capital city in Pakistan. She was always active in work like these since young. She started volunteering and helping people when she was only 13. By the time she got older, she started helping out young girls from more remote areas in Pakistan. She would host a camp and provide education to these groups of Pakistan girls from these remote area, so that they could be good role models and influencers in the future. That was when she met Malala. In 2012 when Malala was shot by the Taliban, the whole incident became controversial and Shiza decided to helped Malala while she was still working at McKinsey. Shiza shared with the audience that how she first wanted to start the Malala fund and how Malala's parents were supportive with the idea too. Since then, she continues to travel and create awareness among people and also raised funds for the Malala Fund.

I was really interested when she started discussing with the audience on how she took the initiative to start this fund. Shiza Shahid who is a social entrepreneurial said 'Starting a business is not like rocket science.' As a non-profit organization, she had limited resources in helping to create awareness. Social media played an important role in helping to make the Malala Fund known. Using social media campaigns and twitters hashtag like '#Malaladay & #StrongerThan had created awareness on bullies and terrorist. She also shared her experience in Stanford. Shiza Shahid said that nowadays everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but we should look at our values and achieve goals with our value and our vision for the world. Instead of creating the next new social media, there are a lot of things that we can look into. For example, environment issues, woman's right and others. When there's a problem, you can create the change to it. Overall, I had really enjoyed myself attending this event, the message she gave had positively impacted me.