ISLAMABAD: Twenty-one-year-old Pakistani Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai put up a picture taking on the #10YearChallenge on her regular blog, sparking an emotional reaction from fans world over.
“Like many of you, last week I enjoyed the #10YearChallenge on Instagram. I saw funny pictures of my friends as children and famous people before they were famous. The posts sparked my memories of 10 years ago, when I was 11-years-old,” she wrote.
Reminiscing the years she spent in Swat Valley, in the north of Pakistan, she wrote, “Peace had left us long ago. We were living in terrorism and violence. Firing and bombing became our daily wake-up calls. Hearing the news that two or three people were killed in the Green Square was not news anymore — people called it ‘the Bloody Square’ now. This was not the same valley I was living in just two years before; things changed so quickly. And now no girl could go to school.” 
Malala, who lived in Swat Valley when the Taliban had infiltrated the land, wrote a diary which was published by the BBC Urdu. 
After one of her entries was published, in which she spoke against the Taliban and how they were preventing girls from going to school, the Taliban came looking for her. She was just 15-years-old when they hunted her down in a school bus and shot her in the face, nearly killing her.
Since then, she has been an avid advocate for human rights, primarily education for young girls.
“As an 11-year-old, I worried about my future and my freedom. All I wanted was to put on my ink-stained scarf, walk through the streets, sit on our old wooden chairs inside those cracked walls, pick my pen, open my book.
I wanted to read and write and question and learn,” she writes in her blog titled “Malala’s #10YearChallenge.”
“I look back on the last 10 years with immense gratitude — but also anger. Why are so many girls — any girl — still out of school?” she laments.
In conclusion Malala writes, “It boils down to this: When most leaders think of all the problems in the world, 130 million out-of-school girls are not at the top of the list. They are concerned about economies, shifting centers of power, conflict and geopolitical mechanics. Never mind that educated girls could solve a lot of these problems. They have the short-term focus of today, not tomorrow.”
“I want every girl to get at least 12 years of safe, free, quality education. I want them to pursue their dreams and contribute to a better world for all of us. But I can’t do this alone,” writes the young activist.
People from all over the world responded to Malala’s call and her post.