Iraq: A new kindergarten brings joy and hope

Thanks to the generosity of Aid to the Church in Need’s donors, a Catholic school in Erbil opened a new kindergarten to accommodate the increasing number of children.

Education is vital for the survival of Iraq’s long-suffering Christian community. Poverty and unemployment are the biggest issues currently facing Christians in the country. To remain in their ancestral homeland, Christians must find stable employment, but a strong education is needed to find secure jobs.

In a country where the Christian minority is subject to discrimination, and where Christians are treated like second-class citizens, many parents want to send their children to a school with a Catholic ethos.

Mar Qardakh School is in the Ankawa suburb of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and the third largest city in Iraq. The school was opened by the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in 2011, with children enrolled in the school from kindergarten to the secondary level. Students are taught to center their life around Christ and are eventually equipped to spread the Word of God and raise their own children in the faith. In addition to its Catholic ethos, Mar Qardakh is set apart from other schools in Iraq by its focus on critical thinking, rather than rote learning, and by educating students as whole persons: mind, body, and soul.

A growing Catholic school

Erbil became home to many Iraqi Christians in 2014, when they fled Mosul and the towns and villages on the Nineveh Plain that were invaded by the Islamic State (IS). This population, alongside the school’s excellent reputation, have contributed the growth in the school’s admissions. By 2022, the student body had grown to 460, including 109 children in the kindergarten.

With the increasing number of enrollments, the school was simply not big enough to accommodate all the students. The archdiocese turned to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) for assistance in building a new kindergarten adjacent to the school. This would free up space for older students in the main buildings and would also enable the school to take in more kindergarten-age children.

The new kindergarten is now open, and it is equipped with six classrooms and a playground. For the school, it is another step in helping Iraqi Christians remain in their homeland. ACN gave approximately $270,000 for the construction of the new kindergarten.

According to Farah, the mother of a five-year-old girl, the construction of the new kindergarten was “a dream come true.” Luma, the mother of a four-year-old boy, describes the joy that the kindergarten has brought: “The sheer joy and relief it has brought to our community is huge. It’s evident in the eager footsteps of my son and his classmates rushing into the school with joy. It is wonderful to witness the dedicated teachers, their faces lighting up as they receive my child and the other children. I know they will ensure that my son’s journey is filled with joy, learning, and love. Thank you, Aid to the Church in Need!”

For many years, Iraq has been a priority country for ACN, as the Christian community continues to recover from the destruction caused by the Islamic State. In 2023, ACN supported 32 projects in Iraq, totalling more than $1.4M.

—Conn McNally