Sakena Yacoobi, Afghanistan 

For more than twenty years, Sakena Yacoobi has risked her life to teach women
and children in Afghanistan.  In the face of a brutally oppressive Taliban regime,
she secretly used education to reclaim Islam—believing that if people had access
to the verses themselves, they would see its underlying messages of peace, justice, and equality.  Her story is that of a woman of faith seeking to transform her country.

Although she grew up in Afghanistan, Sakena came to the United States when her country was under Soviet rule in order to attend college.  She happened to land at a Christian univeristy, where she worked side-by-side with devout Christians, and first realized how faith could inspire people to serve.  As she witnessed her classmates, Yacoobi was moved, and began a process to totally align her own life with her Islamic beliefs.  Ultimately, this experience compelled her to fulfill a life-long dream to return home to Afghanistan and dedicate herself to serving the women of her native country.

After a stint doing humanitarian relief work, Yacoobi was struck by the trauma and dislocation being caused by the war in Afghanistan.  Believing that long-term change was needed for Afghanistan’s displaced population, she founded the Afghan Institute
of Learning in 1995, the same year that the Taliban came to power.  Precautions were necessary.  For security, she instructed her students to vary their routes to school and even changed the schoolhouse location periodically. Today, AIL trains 350,000 women and children in leadership, literacy, health, and marketable skills every year, while simultaneously teaching them how to negotiate constructive relationships with men in
a patriarchal society.  At its core, her vision mixes faith with the transformative power of education, believing that religious knowledge leads to greater equality in society.