Building Bridges:
Overcoming Barriers to Peaceful International Relations
Friday, April 14th, 2006
Sakena Yacoobi:
Professor Sakena Yacoobi is President and Executive Director of The Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an Afghan women-led NGO she founded in 1995 in Peshawar, Pakistan. 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 Sakena’s leadership AIL has grown into an organization that now serves 350,000 women and children each year through its Women’s Learning Centers, schools and clinics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition to her work with AIL, Sakena has been a panelist and speaker on education for women and children at a number of international conferences, including the California Governors Conference on Women and Families, the Central Eurasian Studies Society conference at Harvard University, and the International Institute for Peace Education conferences in South Korea and Turkey. She has been instrumental in focusing attention on the urgent need for education and healthcare in Afghanistan.
Sakena Yacoobi and AIL are internationally recognized for their work and received the 2004 Women’s Rights Prize from the Peter Gruber Foundation. The prize was awarded for furthering the rights of women and girls and increasing public awareness of the need for advancing their rights. Sakena was also awarded the 2003 Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She has received Recognition of Service Awards from two local governmental bodies in Afghanistan, and the Bill Graham Award from The Rex Foundation.
Born in Herat, Afghanistan, Sakena came to the United States in the 1970s, earning a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the University of the Pacific and a master’s degree in public health from Loma Linda University. In the 1980s, she worked as a health consultant in California and Michigan and taught psychology, mathematics and biology as a professor at D-Etre University in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
From 1992-95, Sakena worked for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Pakistan, as manager and then coordinator of their female education program. In one year’s time, she increased the number of Afghan refugee girls enrolled in IRC-supported schools from 3,000 to 15,000. She published eight Dari-language teacher training guides. During that time, she also served as the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) delegate working on the education portion of the United Nation’s Rehabilitation Plan for Afghanistan.
Sakena Yacoobi is co-founder and Vice-president of Creating Hope International, a Michigan based non-profit organization. She is a Global Fund for Women board member. She is advisor to Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) and a member of WLP’s Roaming Institute for Women’s Leadership. She is also a member of the advisory committee for Women for Afghan Women.
