This is the dramatic and gripping story of Dr. Sakena Yacoobi and her lifelong mission to improve the lives of girls and women in Afghanistan. She has faced tremendous obstacles every step of the way as she set up women's health clinics and schools for girls. But even when it's dangerous and seemingly hopeless, Yacoobi never stops.
Dr. Yacoobi has a mission, to help at least a few of a lost generation of Afghan girls learn to read, write, and think critically, and she's done this over the years in tents, in schools, and on TV. Through her organization, Afghan Institute for Learning, Dr. Yacoobi has built health centres, hospitals, and schools. She has trained nurses, sponsored cultural conferences, and run an orphanage.
How Dr. Yacoobi achieved this in a country like Afghanistan is an extraordinary story. Yacoobi takes the reader into the mysterious heart of Afghanistan as she finds innovative ways to offer girls and women the education and health services that were so long denied to them.
Yet now, with the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan, times are dark. Girls are forced to cover their faces and silence their voices in public. Schools and health clinics have been shuttered. But Dr. Yacoobi, impassioned and relentless, still looks for glimmers of light. Education can change lives, she says. Sometimes, it just takes longer.