( CNN ) -- Nobel Peace laureate Tawakkol Karman has decided that the best use of her half million dollars in prize money is to give it all away . Karman , the Yemeni activist who in 2011 became the first Arab woman to be awarded the peace prize , says she has donated the $ 500,000 prize money to a fund for the people wounded and the families of those killed in Yemen 's Arab Spring-inspired uprising . `` This is my duty to the youths who sacrificed for change and to build a Yemen founded on freedom , justice , equality and good governance , '' Karman , 34 , said in a statement late Monday . She is donating the prize money to the Aid Fund for Families of Martyrs and Wounded in the ( 2011 ) Peaceful Revolution , which was set up by President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi . Hadi assumed power in February 2012 in a deal that forced the previous president , Ali Abdullah Saleh , to trade his position for immunity after a year of political unrest destabilized the country . Karman was active in the protests against Saleh 's rule . The Nobel committee awarded her the prize in October 2011 , when Saleh was still in power . Karman said she heard the news that she had been selected as she was demonstrating in the Yemeni capital , Sanaa . She was one of three women awarded the peace prize that year . The other two were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf , and Leymah Gbowee , a social worker and peace campaigner from the same country . The three women were chosen `` for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women 's rights to full participation in peace-building work , '' the Nobel committee said . It commended Karman for playing a leading role in the struggle for women 's rights for democracy and peace in Yemen . She is the president of Women Journalists Without Chains , a group campaigning for press freedom . Karman is not the first Nobel laureate to give away the prize money . President Barack Obama donated the roughly $ 1.4 million award from his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to charity . The European Union , which was awarded the prize in 2012 , said it would use the money -- doubling it with its own contributions -- to help protect and educate children in conflict zones . CNN 's Mohammed Jamjoom contributed to this report .
Karman says she 's given the money to a fund for victims of Yemen 's uprising . `` This is my duty to the youths who sacrificed for change , '' she says . In 2011 , she became the first Arab woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . She played an active role in the protests against former ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh .