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New Classrooms Bolster Education Opportunity in Toutakhel, Iraq
as Part of Stop FGM Kurdistan Campaign
On Monday, February 13, two semi trucks rolled into the remote village of Toutakhel, Iraq, delivering on a promise to help village children achieve a better future through education.
The trucks carried three new trailers that now serve as elementary school classrooms, supplied by the Stop FGM Kurdistan campaign and in recognition of the village’s commitment to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) in Toutakhel.
Located in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region (KRG), Toutakhel is an extraordinary village of 15 households and 112 habitants. In fall 2011, this small village took the courageous step to become Iraq’s first FGM-free village.
Before doing so, Toutakhel’s FGM rate was 100 percent. In fact, just one month before Toutakhel publicly agreed to stop the harmful practice, 10 village girls fell victim to FGM. After joining the campaign, two other young village girls were saved from suffering the same fate.
In return, Toutakhel had one request: an opportunity for their children to receive an education. “Without education,” several villagers said, “we are nothing. We would rather die than leave our children without education.”
Like many villages in the KRG, Toutakhel lacked an adequate school facility. In Toutakhel specifically, children attended school in a dilapidated village house with a caving-in roof and an adjacent mud hut that was previously a donkey shed.
The village rented a newer cinderblock building in early 2012 to house the school, but it is a cold, dark, damp, and cramped space. It lacks electricity, water, and heat. And the school’s 35 students, in grades first through sixth, shared three small classrooms until the trailers arrived on February 13.
Today, the three trailers sit in a lot adjacent to the cinderblock school building and provide classroom space for three of the school’s six grades. Wadi is working with the village to submit a proposal to the KRG for three additional trailers, so that all of its elementary school children can attend school in new, modern classrooms.
The campaign also is supporting the education of the village’s older youth by providing transportation for nine students to a secondary school in a nearby village, located 7 miles away and accessible only through a remote dirt and gravel road.
Stop FGM Kurdistan campaign is supported by the non-governmental organizations (NGO) Wadi and Hivos and the U.S. Department of State. Additional funding for the trailers was provided by the Netherland’s based NGO, SALT Foundation.
Wadi continues to work closely with local and international NGOs, the United Nations, and the U.S. Department of State to increase awareness of FGM in the Middle East. The organization pays special attention to stopping the practice in the KRG through its Stop FGM Kurdistan campaign and other grassroots outreach and education efforts.
For more information about the issue, visit www.stopfgmkurdistan.org or www.wadi-online.de.
For more information about the issue, visit www.stopfgmkurdistan.org or www.wadi-online.de.
Heidi F. Diedrich
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