Barakat, Inc.

The two founders, Habibullah Karimi, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan, and Chris Walters, an American small-business owner, decided to reinvest their profits back into the communities where they have been working, in order to promote education, particularly for women and girls.

Barakat originally wanted to open its first school in Afghanistan, but the Soviet withdrawal and following the Afghan Civil War left the country in too much turmoil to make this possible.

Instead, Walter and Karimi turned their efforts to Attock City, in Northern Pakistan, where a large number of Afghan refugees had settled, and began work on the first of the now three schools Barakat has in the country.

[2] Today, Barakat has grown from one school in Pakistan into an organization spread across two countries, serving more than 3,000 women and children each year.

One of its foremost projects is a program of girl's and women's literacy courses in the Faryab and Jowzjan provinces of Afghanistan, where female opportunities in education tend to be limited.