Mosul eye assoication
Resilience and Recovery
Our partners
We preserve the past to build
a better future
We preserve
diveristy to
protect inclusion
about the project
Mosul Eye Association, MEA, will carry out this endeavor with the trust it has gained across a vast and extensive network with Iraq’s diverse communities, civil society representatives, and institutional and international actors. Mosul University Central Library will be in special collaboration with MEA as a host to a permanent exhibition of Resilience and Recovery’s testimonies to open in May 2023.
Uniquely, this project will also train young Iraqis as documentarians to conduct these testimonies rather than international media or humanitarian workers, who have contributed importantly, but where gaps in storytelling remain. These documentarians will collect, document, and highlight stories with local individuals from diverse Iraqi communities to be interviewed from January 2023 until April 2023. Their testimonies in the video, image and transcribed text will be published in various mediums, including Iraqi and international press, social media, as part of an exhibition, and more. Interviews will be conducted at special locations throughout Mosul, Nineveh Province, and Iraq, as well as on-site at the Behnam Hababba Centre for Cultural Documentation at the MEA Culture House in Old Mosul.
Resilience and Recovery will carry out interviews with Iraqis from diverse backgrounds about stories from their everyday lives, relations, and occupations that will tell a story of resilience and recovery in Mosul and Iraq that remains to be told. The occupation of large parts of Iraq by ISIS caused massive displacement, untold loss, and immeasurable suffering in Iraq’s communities. Still, most of all attempted to permanently destroy the interwoven fabric of an ancient place, home to all its children, long known for the translation of its name Mosul as a connector, for its meaning as a place of meeting, a crossroads. Resilience and Recovery will give voice to their stories for the first time in this wide-ranging collection of oral testimonies.
This project aims to increase awareness at the national level of the shared Iraqi experience of resilience and recovery, as well as at the international level, especially in the academic disciplines and international and relief sectors. The project is establishing a state-of-the-art Oral History Documentation Center to continue working to collect, document sustainably, and preserve the intangible heritage of Iraqis in-line with wider cultural heritage preservation efforts as part of the UNESCO flagship initiative “Revive the Spirit of the Mosul” and international initiatives. Most importantly, this project uses the importance of localization to document communities where Iraqis are the protagonists throughout the process. Our Hashtags: #MosulRecovery #Mosul2022 #Mosul2023 #CivilSociety #Iraq #OralHistory.
The Behnam Hababba Centre is named in honor of Behnam Salim Hababba, a prominent Mosuli educator and historian who devoted his life to preserving the history and integrity of Mosul and its people. Born on May 26, 1937, in Mosul, Hababba was a Cardinal Patriarch Luise Rafael Sako student and published numerous books on the city’s history. His legacy serves as a reminder of the importance of documenting and preserving our collective history.
what we do
Preservation, documentation, and communication
Preservation
Training and documentation
Creative communication
Community-led initiatives
01
08
Create a safe space of communication
Gives communities more tools to enhance their cultures
02
07
common and shared history
connects people
empowering similarities and reduce impact of the differences
Why oral
history matters?
03
06
expands the space of shared history
makes diversity and inclusion more possible
04
05
empowers youth with powerful tools for peace and stability
helps people understand each other with evidence based thinking
Timeline
November
January 2023
December
Project
Launch
Training
Collection
March
February
Stories production
Categorization and storing
April
May
June
Online Observation
Events
Meeting
Final
Events
Closing
Event
Our partners
Advisory Board
Najim Al Jouburi
Nineveh Governor
Rasha Al Deeb
International podcast ِconsultant &Trainer/ Director of podcast walaha sowt / podcast Business developer@WANAS/podcast consultant at Care International
Angham Abdullah
Research Associate at AHRC project"Refugee Wales."
Matthieu Rey
Collège de France, director of contemporary studies at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), Beirut
Paolo Fontani
Director, UNESCO - Iraq
Najib Mikhael Moussa, O.P
Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul and Akre
Mirza Dinnayi
Aurora Humanitarian Award 2019 laureate.
Sayf Al Ashqar
Director General, Central Library
Ninweta Dawood
Assyrian Activist- founder of "Here is Assyria" tour agency.
Ivan Erhel
Murad Ismael
Sinjar Academy
TV documentary film director and producer
Research Team
Omar Mohammed
Project Director
Haroro Ingram
Communication Strategy
Andrew Mines
Communication
Our mission is to provide accurate and reliable information about the city's past and present, focusing on Mosul's cultural and intellectual history.