The Peter Gruber Foundation Celebrates Courageous Efforts to Help Women and Children

Visionary educator Sakena Yacoobi (right) and the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) have been selected by an international panel of experts to receive the 2004 Women's Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation. Professor Yacoobi is President of AIL, which she founded and leads and which serves more than 350,000 Afghan women and children annually.

Each year the Foundation presents a gold medal and a $200,000 unrestricted cash award to individuals and/or groups that have made significant contributions, often at great risk, to furthering the rights of women and girls and advancing public awareness of the necessity of these rights in achieving a just world. This year's prize, which will be shared by the Institute and its founder, will be presented on December 10, International Human Rights Day, at the United Nations in New York City.

Understanding the tremendous power of education, Sakena Yacoobi's parents sent her from her home in war-torn Afghanistan in the early 1970s to attend the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Once there, she worked feverishly to improve her reading and writing from the fourth-grade level and catch up with her classmates. After earning her degree in Biological Sciences, she went on to earn a Masters in Public Health from Loma Linda University in 1981. Since 1990 she has devoted her life to bringing education and health care to Afghan women and girls in both Afghanistan and the overflowing refugee camps of Pakistan.

Resources

• Read about "Women's Learning Center in Herat, Afghanistan," a project on GlobalGiving
   
• Email Creating Hope International with questions or comments about their projects

Teaming up with GlobalGiving, The North Face has initiated a program to give back to the communities where its athletes explore. For every 1000 ft. The North Face Athletes climb on an expedition, $100 will be donated to a local program in the expedition region.

The first such expedition sends Damien and Willie Benegas up the north face of Latok I in Pakistan. Should they reach the summit, they'll be the first climbers to accomplish that feat. They'll be climbing to support the Women's Micro-Lending Program, lead by Roshaneh Zafar and her colleagues at Kashf.

The project aims to provide 60 women with the opportunity to become financially self-sufficient through effective micro-finance programs which will reach out to, and empower, women from poor communities to create better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Future expeditions are being planned for Peru and Nepal. See GlobalGiving's North Face webpage for additional details as they become available.

Resources

• Read more about "Women's Micro-Lending Program"
   
• Read more about GlobalGiving's partnership with The North Face

After reading the article on the Freeplay Foundation in GlobalGiving's 7.14.04 newsletter, Garrett Wyse was eager to help. On a previous trip to the developing world, friends had given Wyse a wind up radio, which he found to be incredibly helpful. A few years later, he hoped to provide similar technology for children living in remote areas.

Because of his participation in the GlobalGiving donor survey and raffle, Wyse now has an extra hundred dollars to do just that. He's giving to "Rwanda Radio Project for Child-Headed Households" on behalf of his friend's children.

"There are four boys, all under 6, who will find out about Rwanda... and discover that they helped make children's' lives a little bit better," Wyse said.

About 400,000 Rwandan children currently live on their own. Many of them maintain a subsistence living for a family without parental care and lack access to any sort of formal education. Radio serves as their companion, parent and teacher.

Resources

• Read about "Rwanda Radio Project for Child-Headed Households," a project on GlobalGiving
   
• Take the GlobalGiving donor survey