WASHINGTON, Oct 11: Malala Yousufzai urged governments and international financial institutions on Friday to make education their top priority.

The education activist, who earlier in the day failed to win Nobel Peace Prize, shared the stage with World Bank president Jim Young Kim in a one-to-one presentation at the bank’s headquarters.

“I think all those organisations must make education their top priority,” she said when Kim asked her to advise his organisation on how best to use its funds.

Malala noted that organisations like the World Bank spent much of their money on health, AIDS and other programmes, but said that making education a priority would help other causes as well.

Focusing on education, she said, would also prevent other social ills like child labour, child trafficking and poverty.

Malala impressed a select audience of the world’s top financial experts with her poised, articulate and impassioned plea for children’s education.

When the World Bank president announced that his organisation was donating $200 million to the Malala Fund, she reminded him that she had launched the fund to do “work on the ground” to promote education for all children.

Asked by a girl in the audience how she lived a normal teenage life as a celebrity, Malala said: “I have accepted this busy life for a reason. I want to promote education of every child.

“I am proud to be a girl, and I know that girls can change the world,” she said to a burst of applause from hundreds of bank employees and local schoolgirls invited to attend the event.

“If a terrorist can change someone’s mind and convince them to become a suicide bomber, we can also change their minds and tell them education is the only way to bring humanity and peace.”

Dressed in a black head scarf and brightly coloured shalwar-kameez, she joked with Kim, a medical doctor, telling him she would rather become a politician because “a doctor can only help someone who has been shot. If I become a politician, I can help make a tomorrow where there are no more cases of people being shot”.

Malala reminded the audience that this week she launched a book, “I am Malala”, adding that “this book not only tells my story, but it tells the story of every girl who has been suffering from terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is about girls’ rights.”

Addressing about 50 schoolgirls in the audience, she asked: “So are girls with me?” and the girls responded with a loud “yes.”