Professor Sakena Yacoobi co-founded Creating Hope International and is President and Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL).

Yacoobi founded AIL in 1995 to provide teacher training to Afghan women, to support education for boys and girls, and to provide health education to women and children. Under Yacoobi’s leadership AIL has established itself as a groundbreaking, visionary organization that works at the grassroots level and empowers women and communities to find ways to bring education and health services to rural and poor urban girls, women and other poor and disenfranchised Afghans.

AIL was the first organization to offer human rights and leadership training to Afghan women. After the Taliban closed girls’ schools in the 1990s, AIL supported 80 underground home schools for 3,000 girls in Afghanistan. AIL was also the first organization that opened Women’s Learning Centers for Afghan women—a concept now copied by many organizations throughout the country. Using their grassroots strategies, AIL now serves 350,000 women and children each year through its Educational Learning Centers, schools and clinics in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sameena Nazir is the founding president of Potohar Organization for Development Advocacy (PODA), a women’s rights NGO working for the promotion and protection of human rights in rural areas of Pakistan since 2007. As an international development professional, she brings over 25 years of experience in designing and implementing rights-based programs on women’s empowerment, sustainable development, leadership skills and community resilience. She specializes in linking public policy with grassroots issues to design strategy solutions.

Sameena’s work contributes to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her current projects include advocacy for the “Right to Legal Identity” for rural women and minorities in Pakistan (SDG 16) and the “Right to Freedom of Movement” for Afghan refugees transiting through Pakistan after August 2021. Her in-depth understanding of gender issues and sustainable development processes has roots in her own life as a community activist that motivated her to start a community school and an organic agriculture farm in her native village in Chakwal, Pakistan as a teaching model for food security, community seed bank for rural women and small farmers.

Sameena is a recipient of the Benazir Bhutto Human Rights Defenders Award (2010) and InterAction Humanitarian Award (2009). She serves as Syndicate Member of University of Chakwal in Pakistan and as Pakistan Section president for Geneva based Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF). Since 1998, Sameena has led on-the-ground humanitarian and legal literacy projects for women and children in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen. She has directed a regional comparative study on women’s economic, social and political rights in 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa published in 2005 and available here. Sameena has worked at several international organizations including Networks of Change, USA (2016-2018), National Endowment for Democracy (2017), Freedom House (2003-2006) and International Human Rights Law Group in Washington DC (1998-2003). She started her career as a journalist in 1990 with Islamabad based daily The Muslim. Her landmark reporting on a custodial rape case (Bani police station 1992) led to the first ever rape conviction of a police officer in Rawalpindi.

Sameena is a master trainer on Gender and Social Cohesion. She has moderated meetings at all levels and made presentations at national and international forums including at the United Nations in New York, Geneva and at the World Economic Forum and universities across the globe. She completed a Master’s in International Agriculture & Rural Development from Cornell University. She also has an English and Law degree from the Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan.

Dr. Tererai Trent is one of today’s most internationally recognized voices for quality education and women’s empowerment. Distinguished as Oprah Winfrey’s “All-Time Favorite Guest,” Dr. Trent is a scholar, humanitarian, motivational speaker, educator, author, and the founder of Tererai Trent International, which aims to provide quality education in rural Africa.

Rooted in humble beginnings, Dr. Trent grew up in a cattle-herding family in rural Zimbabwe. Despite facing many obstacles, she never lost sight of her dreams for an education. Dr. Trent could not have imagined that her steadfast determination, hard work and belief in her dreams would eventually earn her a prominent global platform with world leaders and international audiences where she leads the global charge in the fight for quality education and women’s rights. Dr. Trent has been a two-time keynote speaker at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit where she used her growing voice to appeal to international businesses to invest in equal access to quality education. She is currently an adjunct professor in Monitoring & Evaluation in Global Health at Drexel University, School of Public Health.

Her new book, The Awakened Woman: Remembering & Reigniting Our Sacred Dream, published in 2017, has a foreword by Oprah Winfrey and was the Winner of a 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her picture book, The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can, is based on her story of perseverance, and encourages children to explore their imagination and dream big. Dr. Trent has become a symbol of hope for everyone, and living proof that anything is possible. Her favorite motto is “Tinogona,” meaning, “It is achievable!”

Fereshteh Forough is an advocate of Afghan women’s literacy and a true believer in women’s empowerment through education and technology.

Fereshteh Forough is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Code to Inspire, a non-profit organization committed to educating female students in Afghanistan and improving their technical literacy.

Fereshteh is from Herat, Afghanistan and was born in Iran as a refugee during the USSR invasion in Afghanistan. She finished her high school education in Iran. After the fall of the Taliban, Fereshteh moved to Herat with her family where she received her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Herat University and then a Master’s degree from Technical University of Berlin in Germany. She taught as a professor in the Computer Science Faculty of Herat University for three years.

Fereshteh was a 2013 TED speaker on digital literacy and communication without borders and a 2015 Clinton Global Initiative speaker. Her goal with Code To Inspire is to spread the message of peace and to empower women everywhere. She is an advocate of using digital currency like Bitcoin, and was the first to formally promote its use in Afghanistan.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film. Born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, Marion is currently a Partner and an Attorney-at-law with her husband at their law firm, Sears & Co., in The Bahamas Marion was awarded a Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Law from Cambridge University, and has been a practicing attorney since 1986.

In 2013, Ms. Bethel produced and directed a documentary entitled Womanish Ways: Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas – 1948-1962, which examines the struggle for Bahamian women’s suffrage. Marion has also published two collections of poetry, and is currently working on a third manuscript of poetry and a memoir.

In 2016, Marion was nominated by The Bahamas and elected by the United Nations States Parties to serve as an international expert on the UN Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She is a 1997 Alice Proskauer Poetry Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Her work has been featured at the 3rd Congress of Caribbean Writers, Cave Canem, and international poetry festivals throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. Her debut film, Womanish Ways, has also been widely screened throughout the Caribbean and across the United States at documentary film festivals, cultural centers, and universities.