24-year-old Maryam Abdul Ameer has been sick for most of her life. Like so many Iraqis, the young woman suffers from insulin-dependent diabetes.

Maryam is the first child of her family. She has four much younger siblings. Two of them attend primary school, while the other two are not yet of school age.

Maryam’s father is jobless and the family subsists on assistance from charitable institutions and the help of relatives.

10-year-old Ameer lives with his parents and four siblings in Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad. His father Hadi Wadha is a professional soldier in the army. Like so many Iraqi children who were born after the American intervention that resulted in the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, Ameer was born with deformities. Both his legs and one of his hands are severely deformed.

Several wars and the wave of terrorist attacks that engulfed Iraq since 2005 have resulted in a significant rise in the numbers of widows and orphans in Iraq. It is estimated that the number of widows surpasses two million, while the number of orphans stands at more than five million. Most orphaned families live in conditions of abject poverty and deprivation on every level. Despite this long-term and deepening crisis, the Iraqi government has so far not developed any scientifically planned program to deal with the socio-economic problems of widows and orphaned families.

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This project could be one of the LFT’s most enabling and transforming projects and with your on-going encouragement and support we pray that it exceeds the expectations of the parties that are engaged in making it a reality.

It is difficult to envisage that a short drive away from the shrine of Imam Hussain and Hazrat Abbas (as) there are poor families who are living without access to electricity. The only means of lighting their homes at night available to these families are paraffin lamps. For cooking, they are using either firewood they collect from the surroundings or kerosene to fuel small kerosene cookers.