Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai

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I first met the worlds' youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzailast year. Each year on her birthday, Malala chooses a place to shine a light on girls in need. The company I founded, Schoola, had already partnered to raise money for Malala Fund through the sale of new and used clothing, so I was honored when she and her father invited me to join them on a “Malala Day” trip to visit girls in Kenya and Rwanda.

Nelson Mandela wisely said, “As we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same.” Malala Yousafzai shone incandescently over the course of this week. Malala's annual birthday trips raise awareness of girls who are in need: Two years ago, she visited the family of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria; last year, she visited a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon to raise awareness of their plight. And this year, she visited a couple of the world’s most disenfranchised communities, including the slums of Nairobi and two UN-run refugee camps — one on the Somali border in Dadaab, Kenya and the second on the border of Burundi in Mahama, Rwanda. In listening to the hundreds of girls she met with and serving as an inspiration, Malala helped them learn to let their lights shine.

While you might not expect it amongst such hardship and poverty, almost all of the girls we met with talked not only of their own dreams, but of helping others once those dreams were realized. Their communities were rich and connected. There is an understood symbiosis among the girls that grow up together, an unwritten contract that if you succeed, it is your responsibility to help others do so as well, to carry the light of progress forward from one individual to the rest of the community.