Professor Sakena Yacoobi is President and Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an Afghan women-led NGO 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 Sakena’s leadership AIL has established itself as a groundbreaking, visionary organization which works at the grassroots and empowers women and communities to find ways to bring education and health services to rural and poor urban girls, women and other poor and disenfranchised Afghans. AIL was the first organization to offer human rights and leadership training to Afghan women. AIL supported 80 underground home schools for 3000 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 their 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.
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, the One World Forum at Warwick University in England, Association for Women in Development in Bangkok, and the International Institute for Peace Education in South Korea, Turkey, Greece and Costa Rica. She has been instrumental in focusing attention on the urgent need for women’s rights and education and healthcare in Afghanistan.
AIL and Sakena Yacoobi are internationally recognized for their work and jointly received the 2005 Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy. Sakena and AIL received the 2004 Women’s Rights Prize from the Peter Gruber Foundation.
Sakena is a Senior Ashoka Fellow and the first Ashoka Fellow from Afghanistan. In 2006, Sakena received the Citizen Leader Award from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In addition, Sakena was also awarded the 2002 Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She has received Recognition of Service Awards from local governmental bodies in Afghanistan, and the Bill Graham Award from The Rex Foundation. Sakena was among 1,000 women nominated to jointly receive the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
In May 2007, Sakena was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the Pacific recognizing her as an exemplary social entrepreneur and humanitarian. Sakena was also honored as a role model at the Eighth National Role Models Conference on September 16, 2007 in Washington D.C. In December 2007 , Sakena was honored with the 2007 Gleitsman International Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. While in June of 2008 Sakena received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanitarian Service from Loma Linda University in California.
Most recently it was announced that Sakena is to be honored with The Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership to be awarded in March 2009. In January 2009 Sakena received the Americans for UNFPA Advocates Award for women's health and dignity.
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. Before returning in 1990 to work with her people, Sakena was a professor at D’Etre University and a health consultant. While working with refugees in Pakistan, 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 member of the Board of Directors of Global Fund for Women. She is advisor to Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) and a member of WLP’s Roaming Institute for Women’s Leadership. She is a member and past steering committee member of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief.
For details on the awards received by Professor Yacoobi and AIL please see the AIL Awards page.