In Afghanistan, grief is never far away. “You are always losing somebody,” says Sakena Yacoobi. A native of Afghanistan, Yacoobi has lost friends and colleagues to bombings and kidnappings. She has seen routine health matters turn fatal for want of basic medical care. When the losses pile up and Yacoobi gets to feeling “a little down,” she asks her bodyguard to drive her to a nearby preschool. There, it doesn’t take long before this short woman in a hijab is smiling. “I see kids singing, drawing, playing, learning. Their happiness is my happiness,” she says, “and I am ready to go 100 miles per hour again.” For more than a decade, Yacoobi has devoted her considerable energies to rebuilding educational opportunities in a country that had almost forgotten how to learn. The Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), which she founded in 1995, now reaches 350,000 women and girls annually with programs that extend from preschool through university. In addition, men and boys benefit from AIL’s leadership training, which promotes peaceful strategies for resolving conflict. AIL also provides health education, operates medical clinics, and teaches income-generating vocational skills like carpet weaving. Through all these initiatives, AIL emphasizes critical thinking “so that…