ADWI: Empowerment for Women and Children in Iraq

Wadi’s partner, the Awareness and Development Organization for Women and Children in Iraq (ADWI) was founded in 2018. It is registered with the Kurdish regional government as a local non-governmental organization.

Sustainability is a word you hear used very often in development circles, but other than a buzzword, what does it really mean to be a sustainable organization or to have a sustainable project? What happens when the two year project is over, and funding has dried up?

At Wadi we have long held the view that the best way to actually be sustainable is to build the technical capacity, but also to highlight the incredible insight and ideas of our local staff. We are committed to this concept in a very special way. We have been working on site for 30 years, some of our Iraqi team members have been with us for over two decades. We have a clear goal: that over time, employees will become partners, and projects will develop into their own local and independent organizations. We call this concept ‘from project to partner’.

ADWI-Avtivities within the “No-to-Violence” Campaign with the playbuses

ADWI emerged organically when team members started taking on the lead in the ‘No to Violence’ campaign and decided to found the organization to respond to the needs they saw in their communities. Their current projects keep them busy in the Ranya and Germian regions, where ADWI cooperates with Wadi in the ‘No-to Violence’ and #KeepKurdistanGreen campaigns, the employees come from the respective regions and have built a stable relationship of trust with villagers, regional authorities, schools and kindergartens.