The Children of Sadr City: Restored Hope for an Education

By Yehya Othman

Photo: Usama Jalil Nahi

Young students in Sadr City enjoy being back in class. IMC rehabilitated their school, which had been destroyed during the war.

Baghdad, October 2008 - Sadr City, located in the eastern Rusafa District of Baghdad, is home to nearly three million Iraqis densely packed into about eight square miles. The area has seen numerous clashes, most recently in late March 2008. Eyewitnesses described the situation at the time as “catastrophic,” even “inhuman”. International Medical Corps recognized the population was in desperate need of help - and that those paying the highest price were the children.

Along with the emotional pain of seeing atrocities first-hand and being shut in their homes as fighting tore through their streets, thousands of children missed the final exams required to pass them onto the next grade and had their schools demolished by the fighting.

Photo: IMC/Haider Muhsin

IMC helped rebuild this and several other Sadr City schools destroyed during the war.

During the weeks of the conflict, International Medical Corps quietly shuttled food and essential supplies into Sadr City. With security restored, the people of Sadr City, not least its children, can now receive the basic services they need. IMC has undertaken rehabilitation of four schools under a program called IMPACT, in partnership with UNICEF. These facilities, serving nearly 4,000 children under the age of 12 were over 70 percent destroyed, with broken doors and windows, soot on the walls, damaged furniture, and bullet-hole reminders of the fighting. The children who attended these schools, if they were allowed outside at all, had been forced to travel long distances to already overcrowded classrooms.

Work on Shairah al Arabia and al Farakhed schools began in July, while Sfeen and al Khulafaa schools were started in August. Amazingly, International Medical Corps was able to complete all of the rehabilitations in time for the start of classes after the Eid al-Fitr holiday in early October.

Photo: Usama Jalil Nahi

Young students outside their Sadr City school, which IMC rehabilitated after it was destroyed during the war.

For children who once feared they might never be able to go back to school, their return was full of the smiles and excitement that only a first-day of classes can bring. Teachers and staff walked into a professional workplace better than the one they had before fighting began. The children who had experienced immense misery and sorrow now had a place to get a proper education and to develop into normal adults through play and social interaction with their peers. These schools had become not just houses of education, but gardens for the blooming youth of Iraq to escape the fate of the uneducated and neglected.

International Medical Corps brought these places of learning back to life, where children can study in newly refurbished classrooms, play in new playgrounds and enjoy the right to education that they deserve.