In the school students are taught to centre their life in Christ and are equipped to spread the Word of God and raise their own future children in the Faith. In addition to its Catholic ethos, Mar Qardakh is set apart from other schools in Iraq by focusing on critical thinking rather than rote learning and educating the students as whole persons: mind, body and soul.
Erbil became home to many Iraqi Christians fleeing the Islamic State (IS) from the Christian villages of the Niniveh Plain and Mosul in 2014. This, alongside the school’s excellent reputation, has meant that admissions have been growing steadily. By 2022, the school had grown to 460 pupils, including 109 children in the kindergarten.
With the increasing number of enrolments, the school was simply not big enough to accommodate all students. The archdiocese turned to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) for assistance in building a new kindergarten adjacent to the school. This would free up space for the older students in the main school buildings and would also allow the school to take more kindergarten-age children.
The new kindergarten has now been built and opened. It is equipped with six classrooms and a playground in which the children can play and learn, allowing Mar Qardakh to accommodate increasing student numbers, all helping Iraq’s Christians to remain in their homeland. ACN contributed approximately €250,000 to the construction of the new kindergarten.
According to Farah, the mother of a five-year-old girl, the construction of the new kindergarten was “a dream come true”. Luma, the mother of a four-year-old boy, describes the joy that the kindergarten has brought: “The sheer joy and relief it has brought to our community is huge. It’s evident in the eager footsteps of my son and others rushing into the kindergarten with real joy."
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