 Professional Women's Village News
By The Associated Press
Pragmatic Afghan woman educates thousands
By HEIDI VOGT
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Sakena
Yacoobi is a builder of schools and clinics who says she hopes that
educating women will help bring peace to Afghanistan. But she is no
idealist.
The 61-year-old Afghan woman first
started refugee schools in Pakistan, then underground girls schools in
Afghanistan under the Taliban. After that regime's 2001 ouster, she
opened scores of women's centers teaching basic reading, math, sewing
and health skills. Her programs now serve about 350,000 women and
children a year.
While she has lofty goals, she says
her success has come from discipline and realism.
Yacoobi doesn't run programs in the
more dangerous parts of Afghanistan because she won't be able to get
teachers to stay. She doesn't work with communities who won't embrace
her approach because without their support a school will fail. And she
orders all women and girls involved in her programs to wear
head-covering scarves to show that they are observant Muslims.
As a result, her Afghan Institute of
Learning, or AIL, has grown from a few makeshift schools in Pakistan and
Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to an organization running schools, women's
learning centers, day care centers and clinics across seven of the 34
Afghan provinces. Yacoobi says it costs her about $1.5 million a year.
"I challenge anybody if they can run
this same program at $3 million. They could not. Because every penny
that I spend, I really watch where it goes, how it goes,'' Yacoobi says.
Many of her former students are now
professional Afghan women working in offices, as teachers and in the
government. Afghanistan's only female provincial governor attended one
of Yacoobi's schools, and at least one of her graduates works in the
president's office.
Yacoobi represents a refreshing
pragmatism and drive in a region where efforts to build rural schools
and increase access to education have been clouded by accusations of
mismanagement and fraud against the man best-known for such efforts --
Greg Mortenson, the author of "Three Cups of Tea.''
Mortenson's accusers charge that he
lied about how he became involved in building schools in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, that he used money donated to his charity for personal
reasons and that he has not built nearly the number of schools he
claimed and has left others abandoned without support or teachers.
The allegations have prompted
discussions throughout the aid community about how to make sure money is
well spent and that projects don't languish.
Yacoobi has navigated the minefields
of aid, corruption and bureaucracy through the years without losing her
way. Twenty years after she opened her first school in a Pakistani
refugee camp, Yacoobi says it's still just as hard.
She said she hopes to one day have
centers in every province of Afghanistan "and there wouldn't be one
single individual uneducated or not able to read and write,'' Yacoobi
says. "But reality is reality. Fact is fact. Education takes time. It
takes a lot of time.''
On a recent day in Kabul, scores of
children at a kindergarten were learning songs, playing with blocks and
reciting the alphabet in cheerfully painted rooms in a modest compound
in a residential neighborhood. The center is free and gives priority to
children of women who work outside the home. One young boy sang the
English alphabet for a reporter. He said his mother works for a
telecommunications company.
The director of the program said
there's a waiting list and the enrollment could be much larger, but they
needed to keep it manageable with no overreaching. Yacoobi asked that
none of her staff be identified by name for security reasons.
Yacoobi's funding comes from a
collection of international donors. She said she's tried to stay away
from U.S. government funding because she is worried about not being able
to be free to run her programs the way she sees fit.
"I didn't get any U.S. money and I
never wanted to either. It's not that it wasn't available for me. It
was,'' Yacoobi says. She said she just wanted to make sure she was in
control. "I do my own program.''
She grew up in the northwestern city
of Herat when Afghanistan was a relatively peaceful monarchy. Most
importantly, she grew up in a family that, well ahead of its time,
valued education for women. Her father told her she could continue
studying as long as she wanted and wouldn't have to get married until
she was ready.
"It's not that I didn't have a choice
to marry,'' Yacoobi said. "Since I was 12 years old, people came and
asked for my hand from my father. I had a father who was visionary.''
Given the choice, she put off
marrying and continued with school. She graduated from high school in
Herat and then was planning to go to university in Kabul when another
opportunity presented itself. An American Peace Corps volunteer who had
gotten to know the family volunteered to give the teenage Yacoobi a home
with her family if she was accepted by a university in the United
States.
So she got a partial scholarship to
the University of Michigan and moved in with the family of the Peace
Corps volunteer. She took intensive English courses and eventually
transferred to the University of the Pacific, graduating with a degree
in biological sciences.
And she never married. She says she
was too busy trying first to get her education, and then trying to get
back to Afghanistan to help people there. At first she thought she would
come back as a doctor; it was an obvious choice after seeing how many
women died in childbirth in her neighborhood growing up. Her own mother
had 16 pregnancies and only five living children.
But she got a job doing surveys of
Afghan refugees in Pakistani camps and was desperate to do something to
help the many orphans she ran across there.
"I thought education, because if you
really educate the women they can have a sustainable life. They can have
a capacity to be somebody. Always I felt, who am I that I have a life
like this and they have a life like this? From there I started opening
schools.''
But at the beginning she had no money
and no funders. So she mortgaged her house in Detroit and combined it
with some savings to get started. "I had about $20,000 to $50,000 and I
started the program,'' she explained. "Since then, I have just gotten my
own funding.
She was able to pay back the mortgage
and still owns the house in Detroit, though she spends little time
there. Mostly she's flying between meetings with donors and overseeing
her programs back in Kabul.
"When I say I am opening this
program, I really mean that the program is open. You come any time. If I
am there or not, The program should run. The teacher should be in the
classroom. The doctor should be at his post.''
Asked about the Mortenson
controversy, Yacoobi said she was not familiar with his schools so could
not comment on how well they worked.
"I don't know about his schools
because I am not in those areas. I go only the provinces that I can go
to,'' she said.
She's all too aware, however, that
money for Afghan development has been wasted amid the flood of
international funding that has poured in since the fall of the Taliban.
"I am not against organizations
opening. But I am against somebody who has no idea and they are running
a program and they have a million dollars,'' she explained. "It is a
waste of money, a waste of energy and not a good name for all of us.''
Yacoobi says straight out that she
pays low salaries. She has many former students working for
international organizations who said they can't afford to come work for
her. But she said her type of organization only works if her employees
are more dedicated to the cause than their paychecks.
"We have lots of students who are
with the U.N. programs, the USAID program, they are making triple my
salary,'' Yacoobi explains. "I say go ahead, do a good job, go. I am
proud of them.''
Less prison time sought for NY abused women
By The Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Advocates for
women prisoners in New York state are pushing legislation to cut
sentences for domestic violence victims who strike back at abusers or
get coerced into committing other crimes.
Arguing that abuse victims pose
little threat to others, sponsors acknowledge resentencing bills won't
pass this year, but the debate should start following a Cornell Law
School study finding limited leniency for "survivor-defendants.''
The bills would give judges
discretion to cut a sentence for first-degree manslaughter, for example,
from five to 25 years to one to five years or probation.
Prosecutors say victims already get
consideration with lowered charges, like manslaughter instead of murder,
and lower sentences than others.
The Correctional Association of New
York, the study's co-author, says less than 175 women in state prison
could be affected by passage of resentencing legislation.
85-year-old Neb. woman swims to stay in shape
By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK
Lincoln Journal Star
BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) - When the 27
women in the early-morning water aerobics class at the YMCA begin
jumping and gyrating in the temperature-controlled aqua blue, it's a
little rough on the lone woman in the lone swimming lane.
But Lois Rush remains unruffled.
The grandmother in a white swim cap
and black one-piece continues her languid backstroke, each arm lifting
in a Miss America-like wave before disappearing once again.
Back and forth, back and forth, every
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while the water aerobics class does its
thing.
Freestyle first, backstroke second
and then into the 104-degree hot tub.
"I'm old,'' says Lois, 85, taking a
dip in the steamy water, "but I'm not that old.''
Lois has a fan club here at The Y on
the east edge of this Gage County town.
You can count "Aquasize'' members
Gail Butler (who called the newspaper) and Doris Ourecky (who swam
straight for a reporter to gush) among them.
The first time Doris watched the
Pawnee City woman ride the waves with such grace, she posed a question:
Were you once a synchronized swimmer?
"She just gave me a blank look,''
Doris said recently. "She said, `I didn't start swimming until I was
70.'''
That sounds about right, Lois says.
She doesn't remember the exact year,
but it was after she'd raised her four boys and moved from Omaha to the
Southeast Nebraska town 45 miles from this low-slung brick building and
its roomy indoor pool.
Her knees were bad -- arthritis --
and walking was painfully out of the question. But she wanted to stay
active.
"I had a son,'' she says, "who showed
me you don't quit.'''
That son's name was Bill.
A boy born with his umbilical cord
compressed in the birth canal, cutting off oxygen for two minutes. Two
doctors told her he'd be blind, deaf, unable to speak and incapable of
learning, Lois says. They told her to put him in an institution.
Bill Rush became the first
quadrapeligic to graduate from UNL -- and with honors to boot.
He was a writer and an activtist, his
story featured in Life magazine.
Bill was 49 when he died in 2004, a
married man who'd had his autobiography published _ each word typed
letter-by-painstaking-letter with a special stick attached to a helmet
on his head.
"You couldn't tell him, `You can't do
it,''' Lois says. "Or that it wouldn't work. You just kept going, even
if it hurt, even if it wasn't graceful.''
His mom and his brother were more
than a bit alike, says Jim Rush, oldest of the four boys.
"You're not going to tell her what
she can do.''
Or can't.
And Lois couldn't swim much more than
a lick when she started. But she'd always liked water, so she went to
buy a suit, asking for a "dressing room with no lights and no mirrors.''
She started paddling around in a lake
near her Pawnee City home, until her boys and a swarm of water snakes
convinced her the chlorinated waters of the Y would be a better choice.
That's where she learned to put her
head in the water "and blow bubbles'' like the little kids she watched
at their swimming lessons.
Since then she's lapped a hundred
miles. The Y gave her a T-shirt.
She doesn't mind the
three-times-a-week drive. She hauls a few "ladies'' with her. "We have a
kid who comes with us; she's 51.''
Lois laughs her raucous laugh.
Then she's out of the hot tub and
back in the pool for a set of water exercises before heading back home.
Her son says his mom told him a
reporter was planning to show up at the pool to write about her.
"She told me last night,'' Jim said.
"She thinks it's kind of stupid.''
That's because Lois thinks her
swimming isn't very special.
"I figured I drove 20,500 miles to
swim 100 miles. Doesn't make much sense, does it?''
Now she's shooting for 200. Don't
tell her she can't.
___
Information from: Lincoln Journal
Star, http://www.journalstar.com
Wis. chancellor named Amherst College president
By STEPHANIE REITZ
Associated Press
The chancellor of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison has been selected as the next president of Amherst
College, a prestigious liberal arts college in western Massachusetts,
school officials announced Tuesday.
Carolyn "Biddy'' Martin, one of the
nation's top openly gay university leaders, will become Amherst's 19th
president later this summer. She served as Cornell University's provost
before becoming UW-Madison's chancellor in 2008.
She will be the first
female president of Amherst, which was founded in 1821 and has about
1,750 students. Her starting date wasn't immediately announced but is
expected to be in late August.
The 60-year-old Martin takes over for
outgoing Amherst President Anthony Marx, who has led the school since
2003. He is leaving to become president of the New York Public Library.
"I will remember fondly and miss so
many in the University and Madison communities, more than I can possibly
say,'' Martin wrote, vowing to remain an "unconflicted, indeed, a rabid
Badger fan forever'' even as she roots for Amherst to defeat rival
Williams College.
Martin is a native of Timberlake,
Va., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she received
her nickname during infancy as the family's "biddy baby'' to
differentiate her from her slightly older brother.
She received her undergraduate degree
from the College of William and Mary and advanced degrees from
Middlebury College and UW-Madison. She was a professor of German studies
and women's studies at Cornell before becoming its provost.
She has been open about her sexuality
as a gay woman and has written extensively on gender issues, but has
said she prefers for the focus to be on the mission of the schools she
has served.
She said in her letter Tuesday to
UW-Madison students, employees and alumni that deciding to leave her
alma mater for Amherst was one of the most difficult decisions of her
life.
"The chance to combine my belief in
the transformative power of the liberal arts with the presidency of the
leading liberal arts college in the country is the best opportunity I
can imagine,'' she wrote. "I would have left UW-Madison at this point
for no other school, and considered no other.''
Amherst, one of about 50 colleges and
universities in the U.S. with endowments exceeding $1 billion, is
consistently ranked among the nation's top liberal arts schools.
Jide Zeitlin, Amherst's board of
trustees chairman and leader of the presidential search committee, said
Martin emerged at the top of a "very robust pool'' of applicants for the
presidency, including some candidates from outside the U.S. He cited her
administrative skills, passion for liberal arts, knowledge about life
sciences and breadth of experience.
"She has formidable intellect and
she's somebody who's very well respected,'' Zeitlin said. "This is
somebody who's got an ability to range across the disciplines in a very
formidable way. ... She also has two decades of deep leadership at
highly respected institutions, so we're excited to benefit from that
leadership experience.''
In 1999, Amherst became the nation's
first college to eliminate loans for low-income students and replace
them with scholarship packages.
It extended the program for all
students in 2008, saying it would help the school be more accessible to
middle-class students with the talents -- but not the financial ability
-- to attend Amherst without accumulating student loan debt.
Amherst costs about $41,000 annually
in tuition and fees, though the average student receives more than
$35,000 in scholarships.
Its famous alumni include U.S.
President Calvin Coolidge, the famed Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Prince
Albert II of Monaco.
Martin's departure from UW-Madison
comes after her failed New Badger Partnership proposal with Republican
Gov. Scott Walker to split the Madison campus from the rest of the
University of Wisconsin System. In exchange, Martin agreed to have the
Madison campus shoulder half a $250 million budget cut that Walker
proposed for the entire university system.
Martin's position and close
allegiance with Walker divided the campus community. The plan never
gained traction in the Republican-controlled Legislature or with leaders
of the other UW campuses.
Walker said Tuesday that he considers
Martin an "innovator'' and was grateful for her friendship.
"Beyond that, I respect the
tremendous courage she exhibited by being a strong leader of our state's
flagship university and showing independence from the bureaucratic
status quo,'' Walker said.
Despite the controversy over the New
Badger Partnership, Martin endeared herself to many Madison students
during her tenure and inspired a student-written novelty song, "My
Biddy,'' in which the singer expresses his love for the chancellor.
Martin even appeared in a video of the song.
___
Associated Press writer Scott Bauer
in Madison, Wis., contributed to this report.
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