Iraqi Refugees Program

Education

This project aims to provide special opportunities for education in the primary, intermediate and secondary educational levels to Iraqi students living as refugees in the host country. In addition, a number of Syrian students are beneficiaries of this project.
The project involves tuition subsidies and assistance to the students who have fallen behind in some linguistic and scientific school subjects, due to the disruption caused by the repercussion of unrest and conflict in Iraq. This assistance is offered in: tuition subsidies, afternoon courses at specialized teaching institutes, condensed summer education program, and Illiteracy eradication course for adults. These programs were coupled with extracurricular activities that help building their personal skills in the fields of art, music, painting and sorts.
 

Vocational Training and Life Skills

This project aims to provide a broad spectrum of vocational opportunities for both young men and women who were unable to complete higher levels of education due to the war and its repercussions in their home country. The vocational project aims to help these people acquire new professional skills that will allow them to have greater job opportunities when they return home or in another country.
Beneficiaries learn hairstyling, cosmetics, tailoring, computer skills, mobile maintenance, and other professions in demand on the local and regional markets. After successfully completing their courses, beneficiaries receive an official certificate from the relevant institute.
In the third year, the program was expanded with a business start-up course to be taken after completing the vocational course. This helps graduates create their own small business plan, which in turn enables them to generate personal income without having to rely on finding an employer.
 

Grants

Psychosocial Support

The psychosocial support program was designed to support families and empower youth and mothers in promoting a sense of safety and security, in enhancing resiliency, promoting coping and ways of healing and relieving stress, increasing confidence, self esteem and empowerment. The program aimed at establishing trust in self and in others, and at boosting respect to members. The program gave participants a chance to engage in drama activities, drawings, and puppet shows that would help them express themselves freely and peacefully. The program reached 15000 Iraqi refugees in Syria.

Community Service Projects

Community service is one of the activities DERD provides to refuges and people from the host country. This project aims to enable social activists to recognize and respond to their community’s needs by providing community service training and assistance in writing effective proposals. As a result, those activists learn to design community projects tailored to specific needs. Each project has a unique concept and targets at least 100 beneficiaries, covering communities as diverse as youth, the handicapped, the elderly, etc. Projects evaluated and selected by a committee including specialists in such services, and finally are carried out as described in the proposal.

Humanitarian Assistance

The purpose of distributing items in kind is to provide vulnerable families with hygiene, bedding, kitchen, infant, and school kits to reduce their economic burden and omprove their well-being. These parcels match the minimum standards set by international relief organizations and were given to those families classified as the most needy, irrespective of their religion, nationality or ethnic affiliation.
Some of the parcels were distributed in corporation with governmental bodies such us the ministry of education, the ministry of health, and the red crescent.
The parcels donated by Antiochian Orthodox congregations and churches overseas are distributed equally to Syrian and Iraqi families. This aid is an expression of fellowship among the human beings, even among those oceans apart.

Health Awareness for Women

A huge number of Iraqi women refugees are facing physiological and health challenges due to the change in their economic and social conditions, and these are having a negative impact on the stability of the family.
DERD decided to work with mental and public health specialists to provide these women with sessions on injury prevention and health awareness. In the sessions, the women learn how to choose the proper food for their families, practice good hygiene, avoid contagious diseases (including sexually transmitted diseases) and what to do in case of emergencies.  The women are also given basic first aid training and lectures on environmental awareness and the harmful effects of smoking.
The course lasts for two months. The women that complete the course receive an attendance certificate in addition to brochures, printed materials and hygienic supplies related to the subject of the workshop.

Health Awareness for Children

This project targets Iraqi refugees 10-15 years old who live under hard psychosocial and economic conditions, providing sessions in summer camps and summer schools to increase their awareness of hygiene and good habits. In these sessions, beneficiaries receive basic information about nutrition, hygiene and social behaviour in the host country. They also learn how to prevent injury, avoid the harmful effects of smoking and improve the level of health awareness among their family members and friends.
At the end of each course, beneficiaries receive brochures and printed materials related to the subjects covered.

Summer Camps

This program is one of the special activities implemented by DERD. This project targets Iraqi children aged 10-14.
The idea of organizing a summer camp originated after seeing the trauma suffered by the Iraqi children because of the war, the forced emigration and abandoning their homes.
The camp lasts for several days and aims to involve children in activities run by specialists in psychosocial support and building up children’s abilities. At the camp, Iraqi children learn how to express their feelings, adapt to friends from many different religious backgrounds, and demonstrate their personal skills through art, sports, and music.
The program plays a major role in changing the lives of Iraqi children for the better.

Family Empowerment

DERD is empowering families and helping to address the needs of parents as well as their children in order to grow a healthy family unit, which loves and respects one another, through our Family Empowerment program. The purpose of the program is to help families come closer together through therapy and group activities.
Parents come together to listen to seminars conducted by psychology specialists on topics related to healthy marriages, husband-wife relationships, and specific health issues. While the parents are in the seminar, their children attend various programs designed to boost their mental and physical well-being. Children attend activities in sports, singing, sculpture, and agriculture. These programs help the children express themselves freely and openly without shame
The psychologist experts that work with the children evaluate the ones that need more special attention and treatment. The experts identify the children who have been more greatly affected by war trauma, and are invited to attend meetings with the specialists. The meetings give the children a more personal interaction with the specialists, which helps ease the hardships that the children experience during the war.

Recruitment Office

The Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development recently launched a new activity called “Help People to Find Jobs,” to help unemployed Syrians and graduates from vocational training programs to find employment. The office maintains a CV database of graduates from our various training programs and a database of available job opportunities. This activity works with recent graduates or those seeking employment on CV development, and provides training on job interviews, and meaningful conduct in the workforce. It also helps place proper candidates in meaningful jobs by developing key relationships with local employers and the private sector. The office is equipped with special software that can sort through the CV database and match candidates with the appropriate jobs to help facilitate job placement and the marketing of applicants with different private companies
Interested people can come by our office in Kassa (across from Holy Cross Church and next to MTN) to fill out a job application that will be entered into our database.

For more information: jobs@antiochdev.org