Malala added to Children's Museum exhibit
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis -- the largest children's museum in the
world! -- will add a fourth voice to its exhibit The Power of Children: Making a Difference, starting Sept. 18.
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education, will be the fourth child in the exhibit, which will be the only permanent exhibit featuring Malala in the world. At 17, she became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her home of Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school.
The expanded portion of the exhibit will feature her life, the challenges she faced as she attempted to get an education and the positive impact she has had around the world. Her home in the Swat Valley of Pakistan will be re-created for the exhibit, which will present information about her life and show how she used the family computer to express her message of young girls' right to an education. It also will showcase other girls who stood up for the right to attend school.
Recommended for ages eight and older, the exhibit also features the stories of three extraordinary 20th-century children: Anne Frank, Ruby Bridges and Ryan White.
Anne Frank, who hid in an attic with her Jewish family during the Nazi occupation of Germany, wrote a diary of her experiences. The first-person account of the Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank, is often required reading in schools.
Ruby Bridges was a first-grade girl and among the first black students to integrate the white school system in New Orleans in 1960.
Ryan White was a teenage Hoosier who fought fear and misinformation about AIDS head-on in the 1980s. Ryan contracted AIDS through medication for his hemophilia and was expelled from his school due to his condition. His fight to be allowed to return to school and live a normal life made him famous around the world.
The Children's Museum is at 3000 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis 46208. Visit https://www.childrensmuseum.org/