When Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist daring to advocate for girls' education, was shot by the Taliban in 2012, Shiza Shahid--who had met Malala in 2009 at an Islamabad retreat focused on female education--got on a plane. She helped oversee Malala's medical care in London and shelter the family from the media circus. And she was there when Malala awoke.
"While I was there by her side, she woke up and said 'I want to continue my campaign.' It was clear that she could now help the world in a way that she hadn't been able to before," Shahid recalls. She became the 16-year-old's chief strategist on-the-spot. "How do we think about leveraging her voice in a way that's effective, that brings focus to the issues that matter, and creates a platform that drives all this energy around Malala into meaningful action?"
Together, Shahid and Malala in 2012 founded Malala Fund, with the goal of educating every girl. To date the organization has received two major grants totaling $400,000, half from the World Bank and half from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. A documentary on Malala's work by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim is expected for release in 2014.
For their entrepreneurial drive and will to change the world for the better, Shahid and Malala make our 2014 list of 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs. Joining them is an elite group who share their conviction and talent, as well as a proven business model for bettering the world. There's Chase Adam, who created Watsi, the first crowdfunding site where donors can directly fund high-impact medical care for people in need. Since August 2012, the company has raised more than $2 million for patients, which went directly to care for 1,000 people in 16 countries. Julie Carney's Gardens for Health works in Rwanda to make agriculture part of the prescription for malnutrition, and has helped 1,500 Rwandan families with malnourished children; 71 percent of the kids are now at healthy weights. Lauren Bush Lauren's FEED bags and other retail products feed schoolchildren in impoverished parts of the world.
As you might imagine, the competition to join our second annual list of 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs was incredibly tough. To arrive at the final list, my colleague Prerna Sinha and I collected and reviewed more than 100 applications.
We hope you find this group as inspiring as we do.
