Meghan Markle, Prince Harry and education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai will be celebrating this year’s International Day of the Girl online because of the coronavirus. The couple will be joining Yousafzai for a video chat on Sunday 11 October 2020. The trio will discuss the barriers facing more than 130 million girls around the world who are not currently receiving an education, and what is being done to help them.
Yousafzai is an international activist who campaigns for human rights. After surviving an assassination attempt in 2012 because she was campaigning for girls to be educated in her native Pakistan, She moved to England and founded the non-profit Malala Fund to support her work and went on to become the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2014.
Markle has also been outspoken about her commitment to empowering young women and advocating for gender equality. The former Suits star delivered a powerful speech at the UN Women Conference in 2015, where she recalled writing a letter at the age of 11, asking a soap manufacturer to change its sexist TV advert.
“As I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to understand that it’s not mutually exclusive to be a feminist and be feminine.“And to own that and harness your femininity and your identification as a woman in all of the different layers,” said Markle.
Over the years, she has centred her work on women’s rights and has provided resources to women to help them obtain jobs through her patronage Smartworks. Most recently, Markle celebrated the work of young activists during a virtual speech for the Girls Up Leadership Summit, during which she spoke about the importance of women “building each other up.”
The conversation will be live-streamed through YouTube and the Malala Fund’s social media channels.
