For young Christians in Iraq the inevitable question is this: Is it really worthwhile staying on in my homeland? Many have already emigrated and the number of Christians continues to decline, because so many families and young people can no longer see any future for themselves in their home country.

 But at least, since 2015, the Catholic University in Erbil has been something of a beacon and symbol of hope, as Archbishop Bashar Warda puts it. They started with just 11 students. Today there are almost 800. This Catholic University in Erbil has been established with the help of ACN, which for example funded the construction of one wing of the building, furnished the lecture halls and medical laboratories and supplied computers for the library. ACN also helped cover the running costs while the university was becoming established.

To this day, students from poorer backgrounds are helped with scholarships and study grants. The many different courses offered include such subjects as pharmacy, laboratory medicine, English, computers and IT, economics and architecture. The students--the majority of whom, but by no means all, are Christians--are able to gain an excellent academic formation, which also includes Christian social teaching. In this way it is hoped not only to provide a future in Iraq for the young people themselves, but at the same time to promote a spirit of social cohesion in a nation that for so many years has been marked by violence and where thousands of Christians were ethnically cleansed by ISIS.

For the next four years ACN is hoping to support another 50 young Christians from poorer families, most of them from the Nineveh Plain region, that were expelled from their homes by the terrorists of Islamic State. This will cost some 128,380 Euros per year – a little over 2,570 Euros per student for a full academic year.