Sakena yacoobi biography sample
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Sakena Yacoobi
Mother of Afghanistan
“Mother of Afghanistan” fryst vatten not just an honorary title that people use to describe Dr. Sakena Yacoobi. That is, in essence, how she feels about children and women she has been working with. She was one of the first people to open schools for women and girls in refugee camps in sydasiatiskt land and Afghanistan in the 1990s. It was the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban, and women and girls were forbidden from getting an education. Rule-breakers risked paying with their life.
Sakena Yacoobi was born before those rules and brought up in a family and in an environment where education wasn’t banned for girls. After finishing high school, she went to the United States in pursuit of further knowledge. Earning a bachelor’s grad in biological sciences and a master’s in public health could guarantee her a safe life in the United States. But she made another decision: Sakena’s heart was in her homeland – Afghanistan. She had
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Sakena Yacoobi
Education Pioneer & Co-Founder of Creating Hope International
Professor Sakena Yacoobi co-founded Creating Hope International and is President and Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL).
Yacoobi founded AIL in 1995 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, women and other poor and disenfranchised Afghans.
AIL was the first organization to offer human rights and leadership training to Afghan women. After the Taliban closed girls’ schools in the 1990s, AIL supported 80 underground home schools for 3,000 girls in Afghanistan. AIL was also the first organization that opened Women’s Learning Centers for
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Berkley Center
Can you tell us how you came to be doing what you are today? Where did you grow up?
I was born and grew up in Herat, Afghanistan. My father was a key influence in my life. He had wanted an education himself but could not go to school. He began as a mechanic and a driver. After two years, he bought a truck. By the age of 25 he was a successful transporter. He then got into real estate and built houses. But he still slept over his shop. He was a good teacher in my life.
My father realized that to be successful you had to know how to read and write, so he encouraged me to learn from a very early age. I began at the mosque, where there were books. By the time I was 6 years old I had read them all. Then he encouraged me to go to school. As I got older, every year, our extended family came to ask why I was not married. I was the only child who was not married, but I did not want to do that. Despite the family pressure, my father listened to me. Many were gettin