Afghan students study in a makeshift classroom in tents provided by UNICEF at the Afghan government-funded Babazangi school compound in Herat, Afghanistan on September 20, 2010 (Raheb Homavandi/Courtesy Reuters). It’s good to have heroes. One of mine is Sakena Yacoobi, the founder of a terrific organization called the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) that provides education and health services to women across Afghanistan. I first met Sakena nearly a decade ago, and have followed her work closely since then. I’ve visited several of AIL’s programs in Afghanistan and wrote about her and her work in my book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East.
Sakena is in New York this week to receive the Asia Foundation’s second annual Lotus Leadership Award; en route to New York, she also received an honorary award from the World’s Children’s Prize Foundation, a nonprofit in Sweden. Not surprisingly, she’s received tons of awards over the years for her work in Afghanistan with marginalized Afghan women.
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