Malala Yousafzai was born in 1997. She lived with her family in Mingora, a town in Pakistan. At that time the Taliban (Islamic extremists) took over in the region where she lived. They banned television, music, girls’ schools, and women going shopping. People could no longer watch the news and girls could no longer go to school. Girls and women had to be at home most of the time. That is not all. The Taliban killed thousands of people and destroyed thousands of homes, schools, farms etc.
When Malala was 11, she started writing a blog for the BBC. Because they worried about her safety, she had to use a pseudonym. She wrote about life under the Taliban, about the violence, about how fewer girls came to school, and about the closings of schools. She saw many horrible things. In time, she became a well-known activist. She gave many interviews for newspapers and magazines in countries all over the world and she appeared on many national and international televisions. Then everything changed.