CCD Impact Story: Building a team in Alqosh

Flouren is a young woman from a small village called Alqosh on the Nineveh Plains in Iraqi Kurdistan. In October 2023, she attended an international peace camp in the nearby city of Duhok, where she was introduced to a community of peacemakers who helped change the course of her life.

“Before the peace camp, I was literally doing nothing,” said Flouren, “just sitting at home. I never thought about doing something by myself for society. But at the peace camp, my perspective changed 180 degrees.”

Flouren not only found motivation at the peace camp, but she also found community. “My relationships with almost everyone at the camp are still going on,” she said. “I’m still in contact with them. I still talk with them to this very day.”

One of the leaders at the peace camp was Samer Raad, Director of Progress in Peace, a local organization that hosted the camp in Duhok. As Flouren returned to Alqosh after the camp, Samer followed up with her and encouraged her not to wait for support from other organizations or for new ideas from anyone else.

“At the peace camp, and from my new friends at Progress in Peace, I learned that I have to take initiative myself,” Flouren explained. “I can’t wait for someone else to do something in my village. It’s up to me.”

The first step for Flouren was to gather a team of volunteers in her village, which did not require any paperwork or government consent. However, as a member of the local church in Alqosh, she needed permission. When she approached them, they promptly approved.

So, Flouren used social media to announce the need for volunteers, and she quickly received positive responses from about twenty local young men and women.

“Now, it’s been a year since we built this volunteering team,” said Flouren. “And we’ve done a lot of activities related to the environment like cleaning up the town and planting trees.”

But momentum really took off when Flouren and her team started a summer school program for the children in their village. She was aware of similar programs in other villages, but nothing had ever been started in Alqosh. Yet Flouren believed it was possible.

Again, Flouren approached the local church to ensure their support, and then she enlisted the help of Progress in Peace. Before long, the summer school program had become a reality and children in Alqosh were receiving English classes, computer classes, and art lessons.

Initially, people in the village were skeptical and their expectations were low. “We only had a small number of students to start with,” Flouren explained, “but when the town realized that the program was exciting and entertaining, and that we were doing more than just grammar and English, the enrollment doubled.”

During the two-month summer program, new people were still coming even after the first month to sign up their children. And after the first summer was finished, people were asking about a similar program in winter.

When asked what was most challenging for her, Flouren was clear: “We live in a small village, and the culture is somewhat closed and strict, o for a woman to gather people and make a volunteering team, it was something unfamiliar here in our village.”

Despite that, Flouren persisted. “I just went on and continued, and now all of them believe in what I’m doing.”

As far as dreams and plans for the future Flouren will not forget what brought her and her team to this place. “As volunteers, we know what it takes when we want to start a program, no matter how small it is, each one of us needs to pay something into it, to support the things we are doing. And as we get more support, we will do even bigger things.”

The future for Flouren and for Alqosh look brighter today. According to her, the turning point was the peace camp in 2023, and the friendships that she made there. “Progress in Peace, they actually changed my way of thinking, that to move forward, I don’t have to wait for anyone to tell me what to do, or to wait for someone to do something for me.

They gave me this idea that I have to move, that I have to step up and do it, whatever is in front of me.”