Sakena Yacoobi, PhD
Sakena Yacoobi is president and executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an Afghan women-led non-governmental organization she founded in 1995. The organization was established to provide teacher training to Afghan women, to support education for boys and girls, and to provide health education to women and children.
Under Yacoobi’s leadership, AIL has established itself as a groundbreaking, visionary organization that works at the grassroots level and empowers women and communities to find ways to bring education and health services to rural and poor urban girls, and women and other poor and disenfranchised Afghans. Since 1996, AIL has provided education, training, and health services to nearly 7 million women and children.
AIL was the first organization to offer human rights and leadership training to Afghan women. AIL supported 80 underground home schools for 3,000 girls in Afghanistan after the Taliban closed girls’ schools in the 1990s. AIL was the first organization that opened Women’s Learning Centers for Afghan women, a concept now copied by many organizations throughout Afghanistan. Using its grassroots strategies, AIL now serves 350,000 women and children each year through its Educational Learning Centers, schools and clinics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
AIL and Yacoobi are internationally recognized for their work and have received numerous awards. In 2005, Yacoobi was among 1,000 women nominated to jointly receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
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