Help Iraq Student
Help Iraq Student organization shines light on the situation in Iraq BY STEPHEN JONES Help Iraq’s Student 2 Student Coalition (S2S) is an organization that advocates for displaced Christians and other minority groups in Iraq. The group of compassionate students have to be creative in order to figure out ways to connect with their peers thousands of miles away. Crystal Zair, the group’s president and a nursing student, came up with an idea to spread awareness for the situation in Iraq and provide a glimmer of hope to its forgotten Christian students. “I was listening to We Are the World for Haiti, and I was really inspired by it,” Zair said. “I started thinking why isn’t there one for the Christians in Iraq with everything they’re going through.” The idea was to use the internet, which connects people from all over the world on a daily basis, to create a music video that raises awareness to the situation in Iraq. “Recently, with everything going on, the deportation issue with Chaldeans being deported back, it made me think that there’s not enough awareness in America besides in my Chaldean community,” Zair said. “I wanted to bring that awareness to outside of my Chaldean community bubble.” When Zair presented her idea to the board, the support was tremendous. “We all thought it was a great idea,” Christina Toma Kairos, Board Chair – Student 2 Student Coalition (S2S), said. “We were all super excited about it. Even people who weren’t a part of the music video, but knew about it were excited for it. We had nothing but support.” For more than a year, S2S worked tirelessly on this project showing their solidarity with persecuted Christians in Iraq. The primary message of the video: We Are One. The first step was to reach out and gather volunteers for the video. “We just posted to our social media with a date and time for people to come, and they all showed up,” Zair said. “They all wanted to help. It didn’t matter if they were professional singers or not. We just gave them parts based on what they wanted and the fit.” The music video fused lyrics from We Are the World for Haiti and We Are One from the Lion King. After making numerous tweaks and adjustments during production, the video was finally ready to go live. “We just kept changing things and changing things until finally we got it perfected with the lyrics,” Zair said. “We got a beat from a couple of people 22 CHALDEAN NEWS MARCH 2018
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