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Trees For Hope

Artists For The World normally plants trees, which give shelter from summer's heat, which produce oxygen, which hold water in the soil and so much more - but in this project we aim further, and plant hope into young people who survived a genocide. They lost their parents, their homes, their future - and find themselves living in refugee camps in Irak. Children and adolescents, surrounded by nearly desert like, barren, deforested land, will learn again to have a goal, they learn to care, they learn to retake responsibility, they learn to change their future, by caring for new planted life, in form of trees.

For this project Artistst For The World works together with Our Bridge, a charity based in Germany. The webpage in German: ourbridge.de

The story:

August 2014: ISIS started a large-scale offensive at about two o'clock in the morning against the Northern Iraqi city of Sinjar (Shingal). Those who fall prey to the fighters of the so-called Islamic State are doomed to die. Civilians are being massacred in an ethnic cleansing, women being abducted, sold and enslaved. If you can escape the IS, you must get by in the Shingal Mountains at 40°C without food and water. Who does not die of thirst, dies of exhaustion. If you can save yourself in a refugee camp, you will soon be disappointed. The camp was built amidst the barren landscape, far out of civilization. Everyday life is characterized by unemployment and lack of fulfilling activities. After traumatic experiences, people have lost all 'joie de vivre' and will to live. The fight for survival of the refugees at Xhanke Camp has been going on since the day of the attack. Their natural enemies are the cold during winter, the heat during summer and poverty. People are systematically marginalized by government and better-off civilians. These unimaginable scenes take place in the 21st century in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Our Bridge has been at Xhanke Camp since the first day, serving the poorest, the weakest and the most helpless.

The situation for the children left behind in the war zones is devastating. Infants and young children are homeless and lost their parents. Here they are helplessly exposed to physical and commercial exploitation and, consequently, to poverty. Especially orphans, widows, singles, people with disabilities, the elderly and the sick are in the care of Our Bridge. Our Bridge is taking care of the defenceless and wants to show perspectives. With the construction of one of the largest orphanages, a sustainable project is being created that helps the weakest.  

Our Bridge places emphasis on essential but sustainable support for the war-traumatized individuals.
The focus of the educational part of Our Bridge is helping people to help themselves. Orphans are empowered by professional and trained professionals with educational opportunities to escape poverty by being individually taught the knowledge they need.
The intention of a sustainable educational offer stems from the inequity of opportunities and the missing infrastructure, as well as the systematic exclusion of financially worse-off people in the region. Educational offers include a variety of subjects - as: musical and technical training, teaching of languages ​​and natural sciences as well as pedagogical and psychological care of children traumatized by war. The teaching materials are based on the education plans in schools in Germany.
Trained orphans should maintain and expand this educational circle by becoming part of the project themselves.

All received funds for 'Trees For Hope' will go into the begreening of the lands of the orphanage and if the raised funds will make it possible, also of the adjacent village. In spring 2018 Artists For The World enabled a first tree planting, after the enthusiatic engagement of the children and adolescents, Artists For The World decided to specially raise funds for these young people in Kurdistan. 

 

 

the tree nursery

during the first planting,
enabled in spring 2018, adolescents asked, if it would be possible to have also some
blooming flowers in pots, to have a more positive living situation...


the playground
should become a bit greener with time...

...thanks to the care of children
and adolescents the first planted trees have already taken roots!

 

Thanks to:
Farmacia Zintgraff - Locarno; Virginie Massy-Morard, Yendri Wahyuni, Dr. Karin Kürsteiner, Frank Opitz, Zbigniew Tappert, Rosie Hughes, Paolo Ambrosetti, Jill Hurter, Sigrit Lachnitt