Malala Yousafzai Accepted Her Nobel Peace Prize This Morning on Behalf of Girls Everywhere

Congratulations to Smart Girl Malala, who accepted her @NobelPrize today!! cc: @MalalaFund #nobelprize2014 pic.twitter.com/4BcQ7z8MKp

— AmyPoehlerSmartGirls (@smrtgrls) December 10, 2014

At a ceremony in Oslo earlier today, 17-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai became the 16th woman to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize when she accepted her joint award alongside Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi. According to The BBC, “Nobel organisers say there have never been such standing ovations.”

Malala—the youngest Nobel laureate ever, and only the second Pakistani to receive the honor—accepted the award on behalf of children everywhere, urging the world to respect the voices of young people:

It [the award] is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

I am here to stand up for their rights, raise their voice. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.

Malala’s half of the $1.4m in award money will go towards the Malala Fund, her organization for childhood education

to help give girls everywhere a quality education and call on leaders to help girls like me.

[…] I will continue this fight until I see every child in school […] I feel much stronger after the attack that I endured, because I know, no-one can stop me, or stop us, because now we are millions, standing up together.

Sixty-year-old Satyarthi, whose organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan has rescued tens of thousands of children from forced labor, declared the award “a great opportunity” to aid the fight against child trafficking. Despite the 43-year age difference between the two recipients, their messages of urgency and unity were the same, with Malala calling on the crowd to take action immediately: “Let us begin today!”

If you’d like to learn more about how you can help the Malala fund or follow the activist’s time in Oslo, you can stay up to date here.

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