Iraqi Children Foundation

The Iraqi Children Foundation seeks to intervene in the lives of Iraq's most vulnerable children at the time they are at greatest risk from abuse, neglect, and exploitation by criminals, human traffickers, and extremists.

ICF's goals are:
•Being a voice for children with no voice
•Mobilizing resources for education, health, legal protection, and trauma care
•Emphasizing sustainable hand-up initiatives over hand-outs
•Investing in training and capacity building of Iraqis caring for children

Our strategy for being a "voice for children with no voice" is to raise awareness through ICF's "In Their Shoes" 5Ks and similar events to educate the American public on the crisis facing Iraq's children and motivate them to take action. We also do a newsletter, use social media, and have released several videos.

Our strategy for mobilizing resources and emphasizing hand up initiatives is to focus on fundraising and partnerships with trusted local Iraqi NGOs, staffed by lawyers and social workers, to deliver legal protection, help end child labor, ensure access to tutoring and public school, provide medical care and nutrition.

Our strategy for capacity building is to bring to Iraq top US talent from the award winning Children' Village (CV) of NY to provide psychosocial training and technical assistance/assessment of government and NGO care of orphans and vulnerable children. We also support training visits to CV. In 2020, we started using technology to deliver distance coaching and mentoring of Iraqi social workers by an Arabic-speaking Iraqi American psychotherapist. The sessions provide tools to the social workers but also help prevent burnout.

Our capabilities rest primarily in the experience and expertise that our Board members and Advisors have in Iraq, our US-based relationship with the award winning Children's Village of New York, and our Iraq-based relationships with competent and trustworthy Iraqi NGOs. We also enlist the professional assistance of an Iraqi-American psychotherapist to provide culturally sensitive coaching in Arabic to Iraqi social workers. ICF serves as a cost-effective catalyst in identifying and bringing resources and local experts to each of the projects we support rather than incurring high costs of hiring in-house staff in Iraq. We have a robust volunteer support staff as well.

*In 2022, as of September 30, 2022, this is what ICF accomplished for the first 3 quarters of this year. (Note: in parenthesis are cumulative totals since program inception)
* 210 cases of helping children get missing legal documents needed to enroll in school or get food and other benefits (since the project launched in 2016, total cases are 1,859)
*195 cases of legal protection and assistance with the police and courts for at-risk children (since the project launched in 2016, total cases are 1,842)
*71 cases handled by special anti-trafficking unit of Street Lawyers to address sex trafficking of young girls as well as human organ trafficking and labor trafficking (since project launched in 2020, total cases are 165)
*93 cases of social services for children such as health care, reintegration with families after release from detention, help in child labor cases, and other social services. (since the project launched in 2016, total cases are 1,419)
*Hope Buses 1 and 2 - and now Hope Bus 3 - have served 168 orphans and street children, full/part time, and provided an estimated 20,000+ nutritious meals . (since the project launched in 2017, total children served are 625)
*Adolescent Girls Center in Mosul area, started in 2021, serves average of 50 girls each day including girls who go to school and those who are unable to attend school.
*"My Life Book:" The activity book that was first introduced to Iraqi caregivers of orphans and vulnerable children at a training in Baghdad in 2012. The release of the second, updated version was released in 2021 and has already been shared with hundreds of children in Baghdad, Mosul, and elsewhere.