Rie Koarai is the Afghanistan Programme Advisor for Shanti Volunteer Association (SVA) and Deputy Secretary General for the Japan NGO Network for Education (JNNE).

She supports SVA’s educational programmes of Afghanistan as an advisor and is also involved in JNNE’s advocacy work for SDG4, based in Tokyo. Prior to joining SVA/JNNE, Rie was engaged in a project of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as an education expert to support capacity development of the Deputy Ministry of Education for Literacy in Afghanistan. She has also worked with several organizations such as Save the Children Japan and Unicef in the field of education.

She holds M.Ed. in Adult Education, Literacy, and Community-based Development from the University of Manchester, UK. She has published a book on education reconstruction of Afghanistan (available in Japanese) from the Akashi Publisher in 2011.