I was puttering around the kitchen Friday morning, getting my coffee, when I stopped abruptly and listened. The TV in the next room was announcing that Malala, the Pakistani teen who was shot in the head by the Taliban for her efforts to promote education for girls, had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

This girl’s courage has mesmerized me for the past two years. After nearly dying from her wound, she not only recovered from a heinous act of violence. She rose up to take her message to the world stage. At 17, she is the youngest ever to win the peace prize.

Her inspiration prompted the United Nations to launch a campaign for girls’ education called “I am Malala,” and it declared Nov. 10 as Malala Day, a day of action to remember her crusade to provide education to millions of girls who aren’t able to attend school.

Malala herself founded the Malala Fund that invests in education programs for girls in Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria and in Jordan, where Syrian refugees need access to education, according to CNN.

For the past decade I’ve been a member of the Whitefish chapter of Soroptimist International, a global organization that works to improve the lives of women and girls. I’m constantly amazed by the stories of courage I hear about through this organization.

During a district Soroptimist meeting last weekend, we learned about the work of Lisa Shannon, a young American woman and human-rights activist who has spent nearly a decade mobilizing grassroots women to address extreme threats to women’s security. Much of her work has been done in Congo.

After watching an “Oprah” show about the plight of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an estimated 5.4 million people have died from conflict-related causes in the African nation through the past several years, Shannon founded Run for Congo Women to raise money and awareness for Congolese women.

Her efforts, too, have placed her on the world stage as an example of the power of one woman to bring hope and help to the suffering.

In a short film we watched about Shannon’s work, she told about Generose, a Congolese mother of six who was fixing a meal for her family when extremist militiamen came into her home and shot her husband as she called for help. They then hacked off her leg above the knee with a machete.

If this weren’t enough of an atrocity, the soldiers cut her leg into six pieces, cooked the flesh and forced her children to eat it. When her 12-year-old son refused, he was shot and killed.

“How do you live through that?” Shannon asked. She got her answer on the morning of the Run for Congo Women in Congo, when Generose showed up on old crutches, on one leg, and ran.

When Shannon asked why, Generose simply replied: “If I can run on only one leg, everyone will know they can do something to help.”

In her blog, Shannon encouraged other women to follow Generose’s lead.

“Show up,” she said. “Imperfectly, without always knowing the right thing to say or do ... the reverberations will be far greater  than anything you can imagine.”

I marvel at such courage. I am astounded by it, and inspired.

Shannon, a Portland native, will speak at a regional Soroptimist conference next April that I plan on attending. I hope to meet her. She wrote a book, “A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman,” that I need to read to fully understand her journey.”

The book’s tag line: “You always thought you would change the world. You were right.”

Amen, sister.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.