TED: How I stopped the Taliban from shutting down my school

Sakena Yacoobi: How I stopped the Taliban from shutting down my school

Sakena Yacoobi is a woman who was born in Afghanistan.She born into a middle class family but her country was extremely poor: she grew up watching women and girls living situations of extreme poverty. That made her decide to study medicine, but higher education in Afghanistan were reserved only for boys. So Sakena had to go to the United States to study medicine. While she was studying her degree at the university, Russia invaded Afghanistan. As soon as she ended her degree, she pulled out his family from war.

All stabilized: his family was with her in a safe country, she had a good job at the university as professor of medicine, a good salary... But she was not happy. What she wanted was to help girls and women of his country, which were suffering a difficult situation because of the war. So she gave up her life in the United States and she went to Afghanistan as a volunteer.  There she formed schools in refugee camps only for girls.

One day, when she was on the way to another refugee camp, an armed men stopped her car and they asked Sakena coming down from the car. As she came down, she had already clear that she was going to die. But those armed men just wanted to ask her if someday she would decide to help children and men, because they believed that not only the girls needed help in their country. Sakena accepted but on one condicion. So the armed men came with her to the mosque and, to make a long story short, she gave them teachers. And these men became the best teachers on the spot. These huge men have learned english, computers,  they lead the other teachers through the unknown areas and they protect them from the threat of the terrorists.

Sakena, with this example of the armed men, make us see the value of education in our society, how education can positively influence in our mentality and wind up with the war definitely. She also highlights the relevance of the education in men: it make them see the potenical of the women and learn gender equality. And she finish saying loud and clear that the only way to conqueer the world is using the love, the compassion, the trust and the honesty.