Update from the Relief International Team in Iraq

March 10, 2014

Since November 2013, RI has been carrying out activities inside the Dara Shakran Camp in Erbil to help more than 2,000 Syrian refugee families. RI’s goal is to improve health and quality of life for all within the camp, by implementing best practices for health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and education. RI is also providing water quality monitoring services to ensure that water is safe for refugees to use and drink. Read more and learn how our work has influenced the lives of refugees like Mahmoud and Kalia:

Preventing Polio

The assistance RI provides has had a huge impact on refugees’ lives by preventing disease and improving health. One key task for RI’s team has been to ensure that all children in the camp are vaccinated against polio to prevent outbreaks of the disease, like those seen inside Syria. The war has prevented many children from receiving routine vaccinations and as a result, Syria has suffered from outbreaks of polio which have caused lifelong disability, and in some cases death. To prevent similar outbreaks in Iraq, the government launched a vaccination campaign for Syrian refugee children but after data analysis, RI found that only four children out of 1,253 children under five years of age in the Dara Shakran Camp had received the vaccination. Immediately, RI began a tent-to-tent awareness campaign to encourage parents to have their children vaccinated. The campaign was an enormous success, and nearly all children in need in the camp have been vaccinated, giving them protection from the devastating effects of polio.

The crisis in Syria, coupled with economic and geographic instability, has resulted in decreased attendance rates for many children in the region. One of RI’s most important priorities is ensuring as many children as possible attend school, and our staff work closely with parents, schools, and local authorities to enroll children in school and make sure they attend regularly.

Helping children like Mahmoud get back to school

As part of RI’s efforts to identify children unable to attend school, RI’s mobilizers met Mahmoud, a 14-year-old Syrian boy. He had dropped out of school to work to support his mother, grandmother, and sister. Mahmoud’s disabled father was still in Syria and his mother considered it shameful for a woman to work, forcing Mahmoud to leave school to work as a laborer on a construction site, a dangerous job in Iraq. “My job is difficult,” he said, “and I miss my friends and school.”

In an effort to get Mahmoud back in school, RI’s education team spoke to his mother to try to find a solution that would allow Mahmoud to attend school again. Mahmoud’s mother was initially very reluctant for him to go back to school because she could see no other way for the family to obtain money. RI’s team suggested that she find a job herself and discussed with her the kind of work she could do. She said she had never worked because she considered it shameful but that she did have basic dressmaking skills. RI’s team persuaded her to accompany them to the camp’s job center where she met with advisors who enrolled her in a training course to improve her sewing skills.

Above: Mahmoud in class.

Mahmoud’s mother excelled in the training course and now runs a small but successful sewing business from their tent. She no longer believes that it is shameful for women to work and is proud to be supporting her family and enabling her son to attend school. Most importantly of all, Mahmoud in now happy to be back school where he is working hard to make his dream of becoming a cardiologist come true.

Above: Mahmoud (center) and classmates.

Improving Lives

The majority of RI’s team is composed of Syrian refugees who live in the Dara Shakran Camp. The work RI is doing in the camp allows our staff to earn an income to support their families and provides them with a sense of dignity and hope for the future.

One of our hygiene and sanitation mobilizers, Kalia, was desperately looking for a job when we met her. A married mother of two – Mustafa, aged two, and Sirwan, aged five months, was solely responsible for providing for her family, as her husband is disabled and her extended family remains unemployed.

Before joining RI, Kalia had never worked and is delighted to be earning an income for the first time. RI provided her with the training she needs to help other refugees, and she said she is enjoying being able to assist others. RI’s flexible hours allow her to return home to breastfeed her baby at lunchtime and care for her family.

In her own words, Kalia says that, “Since beginning work, my whole life has changed. I feel proud that I can now support myself and seven other people in my family, and that I can serve other people in my community too.”

RI’s dedicated team in Erbil will continue its work with Syrian refugees in Dara Shakran Camp to promote health and save lives. Perhaps most importantly of all, RI is equipping refugees with the knowledge they need to improve their lives, thereby giving them a degree of control over their situation and offering them hope for a better future.

Learn more about RI’s work with Syrian refugees in Iraq here.