The Ashti camp in Ainkawa - a Christian neighbourhood in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan - is home to over 5,000 internally displaced Iraqis, mostly from the Christian and Ezidic communities, who fled the Nineveh Plain and Mosul area following the advance of Daesh in the summer of 2014.
Of these, almost 1,500 are children: the future generations of a divided country that has known only war for decades. Children driven out of the place where they were born, forced to survive in caravans donated by international associations and agencies, or worse still in tents where temperatures reach 60 degrees and where in summer you can even die of heat.
In the camp, the greatest need was for a school, so that the boys and girls would not have to travel kilometres in summer and winter to reach the nearest one. We had been working with these communities for years as part of our programme 'Yalla Nila'ab' (Let's go and play), financed by the Italian Cooperation, which had to be interrupted because of the Daesh attack on the Nineveh plain. It envisaged the renovation of four schools for minority children, all in Mosul, the area currently in the hands of the Caliphate. We have long hoped to be able to return to the occupied villages, but the wait has become too long.
We then chose to readjust the project to the new situation, starting work on a 'mobile' school in the Ashti camp, consisting of caravans that can be dismantled and transported when the communities can return to the liberated areas.
The school, capable of accommodating 700 children between the ages of 6 and 12, was inaugurated on 30 September 2015. Work on its construction started in August and continued throughout the summer. Thanks to the work and enthusiasm of the many people involved in this project, we were able to fulfil the commitment we had made: to finish the school in time for the start of the new school year.
Between 2015 and 2016, training sessions, teacher training, and extracurricular recreational activities for children were held at the school. The construction of a covered outdoor playground was also completed, and the school was equipped with desks, chairs, blackboards and a computer room thanks to the solidarity of many donations. It was also the focus of the first street art intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan, thanks to the 'No Fear' project, which resulted in several murals created to decorate the school.
