Apple partners with Malala Fund to educate more young women as it expands its Everyone Can Code initiative

Apple is partnering with the Malala Fund to support quality education for girls, with the company becoming the initiative’s first Laureate partner.


The support from Apple means the Malala Fund expects to double the number of grants awarded through its Gulmakai Network. It also wants to extend funding programmes to India and Latin America, with the goal of broadening education opportunities to more than 100,000 girls.
Apple says it will help to do this by assisting with technology, curriculum and research into policy changes. How that actually translates remains to be seen, particularly the latter, but the aim is to use Apple’s hardware and clout to significantly scale the operation.


The Malala Fund was set up in 2013 by Nobel Peace prize-laureate Malala Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin, with an objective to realise every girl’s right to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. It currently operates programmes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey and Nigeria; combating the suppressive effects of war, poverty and gender discrimination in the name of better education for young women.

“My dream is for every girl to choose her own future,” Yousafzai said in a press release. “Through both their innovations and philanthropy, Apple has helped educate and empower people around the world. I am grateful that Apple knows the value of investing in girls and is joining Malala Fund in the fight to ensure all girls can learn and lead without fear.”

Everyone Can Code

Apple is also expanding its Everyone Can Code initiative in Europe, bringing the app-making programme to 70 more colleges and universities in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal.

The coding course will teach students to use Swift; Apple’s programming language for writing iOS and OS X apps. It’s part of the company’s wider push for budding developers to use Swift and create the apps that fuel Apple’s lucrative App Store revenue; a drive that also includes the entry-level app Swift Playgrounds. Of course, the company is keen to impress the importance of knowing how to code for future jobs.

(Above: Students at Harlow College. Credit: Apple)

“Coding is an essential skill for today’s workforce, and through Everyone Can Code, we’re giving people around the world the power to learn, write and teach coding,” said Tim Cook in a statement. “Since launching Everyone Can Code two years ago, we’ve seen growing excitement for the initiative from schools around the world, who are increasingly incorporating the curriculum into their classrooms.”

Harlow College in the UK is amongst the schools joining the Swift party, offering app development with Swift classes to its 3,000 students, including adults looking to new routes to employment. Karen Spencer, principal of the college, says the course “will help students prepare for a technological future”, adding that it will their “approach to problem solving, logic and reasoning, as well as reinforcing key mathematical skills”.


Cook has previously been vocal about broadening coding education in schools, and how institutions should make a greater effort to appeal to female students. "I think schools essentially teach to boys," the Apple CEO told Alphr when we spoke to him. "They’re not thinking like that, but by and large the things they’re showing; because they just show games instead of all these other things you can do to get everyone interested, [the problem] starts there.”

Apple is not alone in its efforts. The education initiative Code First Girls recently launched a campaign to use its classes to teach 20,000 women to code by 2020.
Over 70 colleges and universities in Europe have adopted Apple's Everyone Can Code curriculum.