Malala Yousafzai earned millions from memoir, lectures

Some four years after she was gunned down by Taliban militants in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Nobel Peace Prize winner and women’s education rights advocate Malala Yousafzai has earned millions of pounds from her best-selling autobiography and speaking engagements, according to reports.

The Sun reported that 18-year-old Yousafzai earned £1 million (P63 million) from her global lectures and proceedings from her memoir “I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban,” published in 2013. Each of her speaking engagements has a tag price of £114,000 (P7.2 million).

Yousafzai and her parents, Ziauddin Yousafzai and Toor Pekai, are shareholders of Salarzai Ltd., a firm established to safeguard her rights to her life story. In a report by British news site Daily Mail, the London-based company made a pre-tax profit of £1.1million (P69 million).

READ: Malala’s improbable journey to the Nobel Peace Prize

A spokesperson for Yousafzai told Daily Mail: “Since the publication of Malala’s book, Malala and her family have donated more than £750,000 (P47.3 million) to charities, mostly for education-focused projects across the world including Pakistan.”

READ: Despite Nobel win, Pakistan’s Malala hated at home

The women’s education advocate, who is currently residing in Birmingham,UK, studies at Edgbaston High School for Girls. She was fired three times in the head by a Taliban gunner while on a school bus in Pakistan in 2012.  Gianna Francesca Catolico

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