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I want to serve the people: Malala Yousafzai
IANS
Last Updated IST
Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education, is seen sitting in her hospital bed in this undated still picture taken from video provided by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, central England, and received in London on February 4, 2013. Yousufzai has undergone successful surgery to reconstruct her skull and help restore lost hearing. REUTERS
Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education, is seen sitting in her hospital bed in this undated still picture taken from video provided by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, central England, and received in London on February 4, 2013. Yousufzai has undergone successful surgery to reconstruct her skull and help restore lost hearing. REUTERS

"I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated," Pakistani teen activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting girls' education, has said in a recorded message.

The 15-year-old was shot by a Taliban assassin as she took a bus home from school in Pakistan's northwest region in October 2012. She was flown to Britain shortly after the attack and was treated at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

She said she is “getting better day by day”.

The teenager underwent a successful surgery on her skull and ear at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham at the weekend, reported the sun.co.uk.

In the message recorded in the days before her latest operation, she spoke of her hopes for the future and the work she wants to carry on through a charitable fund created in her name - the Malala Fund.

“Today you can see that I am alive. I can speak, I can see you, I can see everyone and I am getting better day by day.

“It’s just because of the prayers of people. Because all people - men, women, children - all of them have prayed for me," she said.

“And because of all these prayers, God has given me this new life, a second life. And I want to serve. I want to serve the people. I want every girl, every child, to be educated. For that reason, we have organised the Malala Fund.”

The fund supports her campaign for the right to education for children across the world.
The teenager first rose to prominence aged just 11 with a blog for the BBC Urdu service in 2009, in which she described life in Swat during the bloody rule of the Taliban.

Her father Ziauddin Yousafzai has now been appointed Pakistan's education attache at the consulate in Birmingham.

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(Published 05 February 2013, 12:03 IST)