Education in Afghanistan: Then and Now

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Educating women and girls during the height of the Taliban rule was Professor Sakena Yacoobi's mission. Putting herself in serious danger each and every day, Professor Yacoobi founded an Afghan women-led NGO called the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995. The underground AIL was established to provide teacher training to Afghan women, to support education 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 and it 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 though its Education Learning Centers, schools and clinics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Please join us for a discussion with this extraordinary woman to learn how she accomplished so much in such an unforgiving environment.

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