12 October 2014 - MALALA YOUSAFZAI - Amazing Kid

MALALA YOUSAFZAI

- Amazing Kid -

G'day folks,

I have featured this wonderful girl before, but today is fairly special for her, and the kids she fights for.  Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education, and Indian children's right activist Kailash Satyarthi, have won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. With the prize, Ms Yousafzai, 17, becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner, eclipsing Australian-born British scientist Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 when he shared the Physics Prize with his father in 1915. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the pair were awarded the prize for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people.

  Background:

 Ayesha Mir didn’t go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family’s car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. 

Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things.

At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha’s father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. “She wants to speak to you,” he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances.

 “This is Malala,” said the girl on the other end of the line. Malala Yousafzai, 15, was calling from the hospital in Birmingham, England, where under heavy guard she has been undergoing treatment since Oct. 16. “I understand that what happened was tragic, but you need to stay strong,” Malala told Ayesha. “You cannot give up.”

It was one of the few times Malala had called anyone in Pakistan since she was flown to England for specialized medical treatment after a Taliban assassin climbed onto her school bus, called out for her by name and shot her in the head on Oct. 9. Her brain is protected by a titanium plate that replaced a section of her skull removed to allow for swelling. But she spoke rapidly to the older girl in Urdu, encouraging her to stand up for her father even if doing so brought risks. As an outspoken champion of girls’ right to an education, Malala knew all about risk — and fear and consequences — when it comes to taking on the Taliban. “The way she spoke was so inspirational,” Ayesha says. “She made me realize that my father was fighting our enemies and that it was something I should be proud of, not afraid.” The next day Ayesha returned to school. And with that call, Malala began to return to what she seems born to do — passing her courage on to others.

 In trying, and failing, to kill Malala, the Taliban appear to have made a crucial mistake. They wanted to silence her. Instead, they amplified her voice. Since October her message has been heard around the world, from cramped classrooms where girls scratch out lessons in the dirt to the halls of the U.N. and national governments and NGOs, where legions of activists argue ever more vehemently that the key to raising living standards throughout the developing world is the empowerment of women and girls. Malala was already a spokesperson; the Taliban made her a symbol, and a powerful one, since in the age of social media and crowdsourced activism, a parable as tragic and triumphant as hers can raise an army of disciples.

She has become perhaps the world’s most admired children’s-rights advocate, all the more powerful for being a child herself. Her primary cause — securing Pakistani girls’ access to education — has served to highlight broader concerns: the health and safety of the developing world’s children, women’s rights and the fight against extremism. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is now the U.N.’s special envoy for global education, declared Nov. 10 Malala Day in honor of her and the more than 50 million girls around the world who are not at school. Nearly half a million people have signed petitions on Change.org to nominate her for the Nobel Peace Prize. That is not how the Taliban intended things to turn out.

If Malala decides to continue her crusade, hers will be a platform backed with financial means and wired with well-connected allies. “She’d be great as both a fundraiser and a public speaker,” says former First Lady Laura Bush, who’s spent years campaigning for women’s rights in Taliban-controlled areas. Several funds and initiatives have been founded, including at least one that Malala and her father will directly influence once she has recovered. However, a return to Pakistan, where Malala would likely be most effective, would be fraught with danger. The Taliban have on several occasions sworn to target her again.

Long before she was an activist, Malala Yousafzai was a model student. By the time she was 21⁄2, she was sitting in class with 10-year-olds, according to a close family friend and teacher at the school founded by Malala’s father. The little girl with the huge hazel eyes didn’t say much, but “she could follow, and she never got bored,” says the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous for fear that she too might become a Taliban target. Malala loved the school, a rundown concrete-block building with a large rooftop terrace open to views of the snowcapped mountains that surround the Swat Valley. As she grew older, she was always first in her class. “She was an ordinary girl with extraordinary abilities,” says the teacher, “but she never had a feeling of being special.”

VIDEO OF MALALA'S SPEECH

 TO THE UNITED NATIONS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rNhZu3ttIU

Clancy's comment: I have said this before but will say it again. I sincerely hope that she stays alive long enough to complete her work. Too often, we lose those who walk out of the mist to do great things. Yes, we lose them because some idiot doesn't like what they do.

 Love ya work, Malala! Love ya work!

I'm ...

Think about this!

31 October 2012 - Famous Quotes - Mother Teresa

Copyright - Clancy Tucker (c)

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MOTHER TERESA

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1979

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I have a few heroes that have inspired me over the years. Today I introduce one of them - Mother Teresa. In 1974 I spotted her in Bombay airport and took a chance to meet here. I'm very tall and she was tiny. However, not a word was said between us as I extended my hand. We shook hands and the wonderful woman smiled and blessed herself.  Over the years I have read much about her and have been impressed not only by her work, but her selfless attitude. How did she get around the world? Well, it is commonly known that she would approach airline staff at any airport and ask for the manager. Naturally, people knew who she was and she was soon led to the manager's office. Calmly, she would ask, 'Sir, I need to go to ... can you help?' That's how she worked. And, she apparently only travelled with a small bag which contained a set of rosary beads, a prayer book and a pad and pen - that's all. Above all, she did not care if you were a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Leper or sinner.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

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Nobel Peace Prize Medallion

Mother Teresa was supposedly born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26th, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

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Mother Teresa waited quite some time to speak to the pope about her plans. Can you imagine the pope's thoughts when a tiny woman from Macedonia asked to be sent to Calcutta to help the poor?  However, on October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. The rest is well-documented history.

NOTABLE QUOTES

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

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If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

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Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

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Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Peace begins with a smile.

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work."

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Pax vobiscum

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Clancy's comment: Mother Teresa made it  all the way to September of 1997, then died the night before Princess Diana’s funeral. The gun carriage that carried Mahatma Ghandi and Nehru’s bodies was used to carry Mother Theresa to a service in Netaji Stadium. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets. Guests included Hillary Clinton (she was in the neighborhood, with Diana just the week before), Spain’s Queen Sofia, Italy’s President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Jordan’s Queen Noor and India’s President K. R. Narayanan and Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral.

I have an expression I often use, 'Anyone can write a cheque. The most expensive gift you can offer is yourself.' Mm ... one can only step back, take a deep breath and wonder when will the next Mother Teresa appear.

Loved ya work, Mother Teresa ... loved ya work! - CT

I'm Clancy Tucker.

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clancy_tucker@hotmail.com

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Two famous women: one a princess, the other a saint. Sadly, both have left us.