Malala Yousafzai speaking at the United Nations on Friday, July 12 of the need to educate the world’s children. Malala recalled how the attackers had also shot her friends. “They thought that the bullets would silence us,” she said, “but they failed.”

And then, out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. My dreams are the same

Happy Birthday Malala!

View larger Beyoncé’s Happy Birthday message to Malala Yousafzai.

“I want to work hard, I want to sacrifice my whole life for the education of girls. And to be true, I want to say that I don’t to be the girl who was shot by the Taliban, I want to be the girl who struggled for her rights,” Malala said at the UN on Friday, July 12th.

Malala Yousafzai Documentary

Davis Guggenheim, whose previous projects include ‘Waiting for Supserman’ and Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is filming a documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani education advocate who was shot in the head last October by Taliban gunmen in the SWAT region of Pakistan.

Mr. Guggenheim’s Hollywood producers are Walter F. Parkes and wife Laurie MacDonald. The project is being financed by Image Nation of Abu Dhabi.

Guggenheim and MacDonald originally planned a dramatic film, based on Malala’s life, but changed to the documentary format after meeting her, writes theNew York Times.

Malala and her family recently visited Abu Dhabi, the country which has helped her recover from her attack. The Abu Dhabi Festival donated Dh368,000 to the Malala Fund for Girls’ Education in Egypt and announced a formal relationship between the festival and UNESCO to promote education worldwide.

Malala Yousafzai At UN

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, a survivor of attempted murder for her work promoting education for girls in Pakistan, make her first major speech at the UN on Friday, calling on world leaders to provide “free, compulsory education” for every child.

The astoundingly composed young woman celebrated her 16th birthday on the world stage, wearing a pink shawl that had once belonged to the assassinated Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Malala addressed more than 500 young leaders at a special Youth Assembly, co-organized with UN special envoy for global education Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister.

A new report called “Children Battling To Go To School” found that 95 percent of the 28.5 million children who aren’t getting a primary school education live in low and lower-middle income countries. Girls make up 55 percent of that total.

Malala will return in September for an education summit scheduled as world leaders convene for the UN General Assembly.