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Afghan Teacher Wins World Citizen Award

An Afghan teacher who braved the threat of the Taliban to bring education to girls has won a global award.

Sakena Yacoobi, who set up 80 secret schools for 3,000 girls in the country, was recognized for her outstanding work at the World Citizen Awards in Istanbul, Theirworld said in a report on Friday – October 5.  

The award is given to those who have contributed to a better world in at least one of the following areas - peace, environment, education, food and nutrition, health, and culture and heritage.

“I was happy to be invited here because the world doesn’t know what is going on with the children who are in war zones, who are in refugee camps, who lost their parents, who lost their homes, who don’t have the environment to quietly sit and read and write or draw a picture ... who every time they hear a sound think a bomb is exploding,” Yacoobi said in her speech at the event. 

“To work with these traumatised children is joyful. When you look in their face, when they smile and then they play, it is another world,” she said. 

Yacoobi paid tribute to her dedicated staff at the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) and said the Educator Award is “for children and women in Afghanistan and around the world who are suffering”.

Three other humanitarians received World Citizen Awards for their work. 

Yacoobi, founder and Director of AIL, also won the WISE Prize for Education in 2015.

She started working in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan in the early 1990s, training teachers, opening schools for children and learning centers for women.

Established in 1995, AIL now serves 350,000 people each year - 70% of them girls and women.

Sakena Yacoobi pioneered a ground-breaking approach that empowered women and communities to bring education and health services to girls living in rural and poverty-stricken urban areas.

In a film shown at the event on the first day of the TRT World Forum, Yacoobi said: “Education has a direct link with living a better life, with transforming civil society, with getting out of poverty. Education can do all these things.”

Afghan Teacher Wins World Citizen Award

Sakena Yacoobi ignored threats from militants to deliver education to thousands of traumatised children.

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An Afghan teacher who braved the threat of the Taliban to bring education to girls has won a global award.

Sakena Yacoobi, who set up 80 secret schools for 3,000 girls in the country, was recognized for her outstanding work at the World Citizen Awards in Istanbul, Theirworld said in a report on Friday – October 5.  

The award is given to those who have contributed to a better world in at least one of the following areas - peace, environment, education, food and nutrition, health, and culture and heritage.

“I was happy to be invited here because the world doesn’t know what is going on with the children who are in war zones, who are in refugee camps, who lost their parents, who lost their homes, who don’t have the environment to quietly sit and read and write or draw a picture ... who every time they hear a sound think a bomb is exploding,” Yacoobi said in her speech at the event. 

“To work with these traumatised children is joyful. When you look in their face, when they smile and then they play, it is another world,” she said. 

Yacoobi paid tribute to her dedicated staff at the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) and said the Educator Award is “for children and women in Afghanistan and around the world who are suffering”.

Three other humanitarians received World Citizen Awards for their work. 

Yacoobi, founder and Director of AIL, also won the WISE Prize for Education in 2015.

She started working in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan in the early 1990s, training teachers, opening schools for children and learning centers for women.

Established in 1995, AIL now serves 350,000 people each year - 70% of them girls and women.

Sakena Yacoobi pioneered a ground-breaking approach that empowered women and communities to bring education and health services to girls living in rural and poverty-stricken urban areas.

In a film shown at the event on the first day of the TRT World Forum, Yacoobi said: “Education has a direct link with living a better life, with transforming civil society, with getting out of poverty. Education can do all these things.”

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