Dr. Ahmadi and wife Zeinab Musavi recognized for their work counseling citizens of Afghanistan over the past two decades.
Earlier this year, Sayed Jafar Ahmadi, Ph.D., and Zeinab Musavi, his wife, were awarded the American Psychological Association’s International Humanitarian Award. The award recognizes extraordinary humanitarian service and activism by a psychologist or a team of psychologists working in collaboration with local, national, and international organizations that provide mental health, psycho-social, or humanitarian services. Ahmadi and Musavi have provided counseling for victims of trauma, bombings, the COVID-19 pandemic and earthquakes in Afghanistan for two decades.
Ahmadi and Musavi moved their work underground when the Taliban took control in August 2021, knowing that providing counseling services to victims of war and supporting the empowerment of women and girls would not be tolerated by the new regime. They rented space and raised money for girls to continue their education. However, their situation became increasingly unsafe, so the couple fled to Germany in late 2021 and Ahmadi applied to the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund. He was accepted and relocated to the United States along with his wife. In spring 2022, Ahmadi joined the faculty at Bard College, where he has continued his work and research into counseling victims of trauma.
Read more about Ahmadi and Musavi’s story in the Times Union and from Bard College.