Children's playgroup in capital offers hope

When US-led troops took over the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in 2003, Emad Hadi was working as a well-connected Iraqi artist who socialised with many of the foreigners who visited the isolated country. With his English language skills and international contacts, Hadi was well placed to assist the Iraqi people when the former regime fell. But what he decided to do next was nothing short of extraordinary. Hadi started the aid agency “Childhood’s Voice” to help children in the country feel more like they were living a normal life. Children get to put on plays, perform music on electric pianos, paint, learn computer skills and talk to social workers. Outside, the children have a small playground. Inside, brightly coloured walls, even the ceiling, are covered with photos of places the group has visited and things the children and teachers have done. In an art class, children draw pictures of destroyed houses, helicopters attacking people standing on the ground and cars falling off of a bombed bridge into a river below. Drawing such things can be therapeutic and help children heal after traumatic experiences such as the US-led invasion of Iraq last spring, Dina Mohammed, the art teacher, told IRIN. “Children suffer from many things during war, even if the fighting is finished,” Mohammed said. Other children draw only cartoon figures, a common theme for children all over the world. But Uday Abdul Jibar, another founder of the aid agency, has a more enigmatic meaning for the colourful cartoon drawings that line the walls in the art room. “Before, in Iraq, you could not express things directly, so your free opinions, or your free drawing was not allowed,” Jibar told IRIN. “Now, they can learn to give their opinions - they can decide how to do things themselves.” Two boys in the class are making toy furniture out of cardboard. Folding and gluing the shapes is more fun for him than drawing, Salem Mohammed, 14, told IRIN. Even though the aid agency now appears well-known, with letters, pictures and drawings from children in other countries, it was not easy to get started, just one short year ago, Hadi said. When he first had the idea for the aid agency for children, Hadi brought a group of friends together to plan for what they wanted to do. His agency is now supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) through the Norwegian Church Aid humanitarian group. Iraqis can be suspicious of outsiders after more than 10 years of international sanctions kept most foreigners outside of Iraq, Hadi said. Humanitarian aid agencies are also a new concept to many, Hadi said. “At the beginning we had many difficulties. People suspected us, because the phenomenon of NGOs is not familiar in Iraq,” Hadi said. “We tried to discuss that they’re a good thing in society.” Hadi asked people from the neighbourhood to come to the house, now converted into a school setting, inviting women to open a sewing class in the evenings. Then he asked members of an informal city council in the neighbourhood, east of Baghdad, for approval and went to the local mosque to get support from the sheikh, or religious leader there. Plays put on behind a velvet curtain attached to the roof are also open to all. “When we asked the sheikh for his support, he said there was nothing different between what the mosque wants to do for children and what we want to do. So he was very supportive,” Jibar said. International NGOs such as Intersos and Un Pont Per, both Italian aid agencies, were approached for advice on how they started working, how they ran their offices and how they got funding. “They gave us advice. I wrote a project proposal with help from them, so UNICEF agreed to fund us, but only if we worked with another international agency,” Hadi said. Workers from Childhood’s Voice met other aid agencies to identify poor children, street children and handicapped children who could benefit from their programme. Because the group was so successful, members were also invited to be involved in civil society training in Iraq. They discussed ideas such as community participation, equality, transparency, responsibility, strategic vision and rule of law, Jibar said. In future, Childhood’s Voice will help Un Pont Per with a summer school programme that was successful last year in months immediately following the war, Hadi said.