Kurdish students in Sulaimani gather relief supplies for refugees and IDPs

D. Morrow

24 September 2014

Sulaimani

School may have started late this year for many Kurdish children, but students at the International School of Choueifat – Sulaymaniyah wasted no time putting together their own response to the conflict that has shaken this region since June. While many public schools were filled with families of refugees and IDPs well into September, delaying the start of classes, by mid-September prefects from the eighth and ninth grade here quickly put together a two-week fundraiser to collect food for displaced Iraqis living in Sulaymaniyah before Eid.

“We want to get as much [as we can] to make them full,” said Dosyar, in 9th grade. The Eid holiday is on October 3 and 4 this year, and students want to ensure that at least some of the families who have recently arrived in their city will have enough to eat. 

So far, they’ve gathered 22 cardboard boxes full of staple food items, such as rice, salt, and oil, or “Anything a mother would use for food,” another student explained. They hope that their fundraising will result in upwards of 50 or 100 boxes total by next Wednesday. 

The nine Kurdish and Arab students spearheading this project recognize how different their lives are to the new arrivals in Sulaymaniyah displaced by war, but they also share an affinity to what’s happening to them – especially minority groups like the Yazidi Christians after the devastation of Mount Sinjar. 

“It hits close to our hearts… because this happened to the Kurdish people before, and people remember. It was an act of genocide,” 9th grade head prefect Reza explains. 

Two of the girls here have already visited refugee camps with their families over the school holidays in the summer, one near Duhok and another to Arbat, outside Sulaymaniyah. “It was really touching,” said Sawan, “to see the kids just playing, in the mud…” 

The students are already arranging another fundraiser for when they return from the Eid holidays – this time a clothing drive in advance of winter. “Humanity needs us and everyone to have a stable life – not just for the people here, but human to human and family to family.”