"My time at Malala Fund has taught me two powerful truths: girls will stop at nothing to learn, and we can never take their right to education for granted"
These two truths anchored our work under Malala Fund’s 2020-2025 strategy — a period where we met unprecedented challenges to girls’ learning and solidified our role as a leader in advancing their education rights. In this report, I’m proud to share a snapshot of our impact from the last year, marking the end of our organisation’s first strategy and paving the way for our next five years.
With your support, our work to date reached more than 26 million students. We worked with partners to raise the global standard for girls’ education from 9 to 12 years, unlocked $7 billion in donor commitments to fund education and supported 13 million students to continue learning through unforeseen setbacks, including COVID-19 and the girls’ education ban in Afghanistan.
Our grantee partners played key roles in passing and implementing laws guaranteeing the right to education for all children — from a constitutional amendment in Brazil which cemented education funding for marginalised girls, to the Child Rights Act in Nigeria which protects girls from child marriage. And they made sure policies and budgets actually improved girls’ ability to learn — from ensuring adolescent mothers in Tanzania can return to school to increasing funding for teacher salaries and safe transportation in Pakistan.
These achievements laid the groundwork for the new five-year strategy we launched in April 2025: to restore, safeguard and strengthen girls’ right to education, and secure the resources needed for all girls to enjoy this right. It builds on a decade of learning how we can best accelerate the global movement for girls’ education and shift power to the local leaders working to transform the systems that hold girls back.
In a time of increasing attacks on girls’ rights, crackdowns on civil society and slashes to foreign aid, your unwavering support of our mission is more crucial than ever. We’re not just responding with short-term fixes, we’re fortifying the foundations of girls’ right to education — laws, budgets, financing systems, national and global agendas — for generations to come. Because when girls can reach their full potential, they build a better future for themselves and for all of us.
Our work for girls would not be possible without your support. Thank you for standing with girls, and with us, as we enter the next phase of our fight for girls’ education.
With gratitude,
Lena Alfi CEO of Malala Fund
