In Afghanistan, grief is never far away. \u201cYou are always losing somebody,\u201d 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 \u201ca little down,\u201d she asks her bodyguard to drive her to a nearby preschool. There, it doesn\u2019t take long before this short woman in a hijab is smiling. \u201cI see kids singing, drawing, playing, learning. Their happiness is my happiness,\u201d she says, \u201cand I am ready to go 100 miles per hour again.\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cso that\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Afghanistan, grief is never far away. \u201cYou are always losing somebody,\u201d 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 \u201ca little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5913,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}