My Mission
Nada Ali / May 7, 2008
I am the Relief Director for the Iraqi League in Egypt. My mission is to find Iraqis who need help and to find the money to help them.
I started working with the Iraqi League in June 2007. I came to Egypt in October 2005 and was living with my sister’s family. My sister’s house in Iraq was burned and I have nobody left in Iraq. My husband was killed, my brother was shot dead in Baghdad, my parents were already dead. So now there are fifteen of us here in my sister’s flat. And one bathroom!
In June 2007, I was looking on the internet for Iraqi websites and I found the Iraqi League, www.iraqirabita.org. The Chairman, Mazin Younis, was searching for an Iraqi in Egypt who would work as a volunteer giving money to Iraqis here who needed help. So I contacted him. I am very good in Arabic; I used to write articles and reports for my work at the Ministry of Trade. I have a BA from the College of Fine Arts, Interior Design and I can speak English. In Iraq, I was also doing something similar for the Orphans Houses. I asked my family and my friends to give me money and I went to buy clothes and toys and anything children like, like sweets. I took it to the kids. Here in Egypt, before I started working with the Iraqi League, I was contacting wealthy people I know. I took money from them and gave it to people I knew needed it. Now I’m doing this for the Iraqi League.
The Iraqi League is a registered NGO in the UK, started by Mazin Younis who is an Iraqi who has lived in the UK since 1984. He worked on the legal case brought by British human rights lawyers against the British Ministry of Defence about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Iraq.
Mazin Younis started the Iraqi League in 2004. One of the things that he did was he brought an Iraqi orphan girl back to Britain for medical care after a US attack in Fallujah. All of her family were killed in the attack. Her grandmother died sheltering her.
The Iraqi League is helping Iraqi families in Syria, Turkey, and Egypt. It’s hard to find people like me to do this work because this is a volunteer job. The Iraqi League only pays my expenses.
Egyptians say that Iraqis are all of us rich. Well, some of us had money, but we don’t now! Some people look wealthy because they have the nice clothes they brought with them from Iraq, but they have no money left.
The way I work is I hear about people who need help. I go meet the people. Then I present the case on our website, www.iraqi-refugees.org. I put a photo and their story on the website and we ask people to donate to that case with PayPal on www.iraqirabita.org. Many Iraqis don’t want their photo on the website so we put a back view. That helps people believe us and donate money to that family. The money goes to the Iraqi League British charity account and they send it to us. Or people in Egypt give me the money and I take it to the families who need it. I keep receipts and accounts of everything I do.
So far we have success. We have donors who are Egyptian, Saudi, Libyan. They send money every month for certain families. I also give people money for school, medical.
If I can help even one family, that makes me happy.
