The residents of IDP camps are living under difficult circumstances, including difficulty in obtaining food and clean water and access to proper healthcare. This makes them especially at risk and vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.

These concerns are an important part of ILF Fellow, Sami Joku Rasho from Sinjar, who is part of the current 2019/2020 class of fellows and works as an English teacher in the IDP camps in Dohuk. Sami undertook the responsibility to spread awareness in order to avoid the risks of infection in the camps. In this context, Sami and his colleagues in the Yahad organization launched a campaign to locally manufacture facemasks and distribute them to the families in several IDP camps. They started their campaign by obtaining the necessary approvals on the raw materials used to manufacture the facemasks from the Department of Health in Dohuk. Later on, they led multiple volunteering teams to distribute the facemasks.

During an online webinar within the ILF program, Sami spoke about his experience working on this campaign and said:: “We felt proud as we watched the families’ response to the campaign and their appreciation for the efforts we have made, not only for distributing more than 15000 facemasks in just a few days, but for all of our campaigns inside the camps, such as distributing food baskets for the IDP families.”