Dr. Sakena Yacoobi Photo: Credit: Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, P.C.
Education activist Dr Sakena Yacoobi is the executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) – an Afghan women-led NGO she founded in 1995. After the Taliban closed girls' schools in the 1990s, AIL supported 80 underground home schools for 3,000 girls in Afghanistan. She was twice threatened by armed Taliban to stop teaching, but she never gave up.
Now, under her leadership, AIL works at to empower women and bring education and health services to poor women and girls in rural and urban areas, serving hundreds of thousands of women and children a year through training programs, Learning Centers, schools and clinics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
She speaks to Kathryn Ryan
In 2005 she was jointly nominated with 99 other women for the Nobel Peace Prize. This year she was awarded the 2015 WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) Prize for Education.
