The youth and women in the Sinjar area are in lack of so many services whether educational or vocational opportunities. Therefore, the Youth Bridge Development Organization (YBDO) strived to provide as much support as possible to Sinjar youth and women by opening many educational and vocational training opportunities in the YBDO community center in Sinjar to make it possible for the youth and women to have access to the services.
During the implementation of the “Building Peaceful Futures in Sinjar” project and within 4 months, a total of 987 direct beneficiaries were targeted in about 50 different educational and vocational courses, awareness campaigns, community committees as well as referral cases to other organizations, and institutions.
These educational courses helped so many students with their curriculums that they did not have teachers to teach them in their school in the subject of English 3rd grade-Intermediate school, English conversation, English grammar, English 6th grade preparatory school /Kurdish, Math 6th grade -primary School, Math 6th grade -primary School, physics 6th-grade preparatory school, and Literacy courses. As well as conducting different vocational pieces of training including 2 knitting courses, 1 Make-up course, and 1 art and drawing course. These courses mainly aimed to teach women and men some vocational skills to provide them with some basics of knitting, art, and make-up to help those women to acquire knowledge and skills to start their own small businesses and gain some income from those businesses. Besides, financial support, these vocational courses were a space for so many girls and women to communicate and come out of the homesickness and the bad mood they experience at home for not having anything to do, so these courses were a safe space for them to get along with each other, and they also contributed in creating inclusion among women and girls from different groups like Yezidi and Arab to participate together in the training courses and break the barriers that they built in the face of each other due to the last genocide against Yezidis by ISIS.
Besides educational and vocational courses, 5 community committees were formed from the community and different community campaigns were conducted including a Health awareness campaign about Cholera, anti-corruption training for YBDO staff, a public event about 16 days of activism for the elimination of violence against women, first aid training, Peace and Security Training, Early Marriage workshop, Youth peace, and security, inclusion, and peace…. Etc. And, for the 4 months of the project, referrals were referred to other NGOs and government departments for the needs of the community to be met.
NRC
Ghazala Elias Shvan
