As a Yezidi community activist, Faisal* was constantly exposed to stories including the genocide, rape, killing, and torture of his people comitted by ISIS leaving Faisal experiencing symptoms of emotional trauma. However, with psychological support facilitated by SEED for him and his family, he has improved his mental health significantly and enabled him to return Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Women and girls, in particular, in Kurdistan and Iraq often face forms of abuse in the home, including but not limited to physical and emotional harm. Lacking sufficient local psychosocial systems, survivors have few options. In one recent example, SEED’s partner organization in Sulaimani, Wchan, provided mental health services in order to help Helin* improve Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Leena* is a 20-year-old woman from the south of Iraq. Sadly, she lost her mother at a young age and her father died in a bombing when she was a child. Having lost both parents at such an early age, she was forced to live with her relatives. The next nine years of her life, Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Avin* is a young Yezidi woman who was captured by ISIS alongside her sisters in August 2014. On the same day, ISIS murdered her father. Avin says, “I can still hear my father’s voice and the sound of bullets.” During her capture, she was sold from ISIS terrorist to terrorist over 10 times and was moved Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Dlovan* and Zerdesht* are two young brothers. In 2014, ISIS killed their father and they were captured along with their mother, Zaynab*. The brothers were tortured, abused, exposed to violence against others and held by ISIS in two ISIS training camps, one in Syria and one in Iraq. Thankfully, Zaynab, Dlovan and Zerdesht were able to Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Mansa is a woman from Sinjar who fled her home when ISIS attacked in August 2014. She and her family ran away but in the chaos that followed, she and two of her children became separated from her husband and their six other children on Mount Sinjar. Thankfully she and her family survived the desperate Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Haifa, a young woman from Mosul, was a university student when ISIS took over Mosul in summer 2014. Fearing for their lives, Haifa and her family fled, leaving everything behind. They suffered a difficult journey to safety in Kurdistan, before finding themselves on the street in Akre, a town in Duhok. They spent four months Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.

Fatima is originally from a village near Mosul but was forced to flee with her family from ISIS’s extreme brutality against the Yezidi minority community in August 2014. Along with thousands of others, Fatima and her family endured a long and arduous journey, first escaping to Mount Sinjar, and then to the Syrian border, before Lead SEED’s psychosocial support and community development programming to engage and empower communities.