This is exactly what helped Alvera when she arrived in Lebanon at the age of 18 after more than a year on the run. At that time, she found a connection at the youth meetings of a Christian community and thus found support and was no longer alone. Her great role model is Father Youssef, the priest who supported her from the very beginning and accompanied her family. He distributed food parcels and medicine to the Iraqi community for our partner organisation Pontifical Mission. That impressed the young people. When a position in social work became available, Alvera knew immediately: "That's what I want to do." Helping others. Showing them how to help themselves when they have experienced what they have experienced.
"I've been through so many terrible things. In Mosul, we were threatened by terrorist groups like IS for ten years because we are Christians." Alvera's father and brothers barely survived several attacks, a bomb destroyed the family home and the street was littered with corpses after a car bomb attack.
Alvera was ten years old when she witnessed this. Despite her severe trauma, she says today: "That is my strength now: I have the feeling that I can cope with everything and achieve anything." That's why she wants to dedicate her life to the church, as a human rights activist or lawyer. "Because I was there, I know what it means to fight, what it demands of you - and what people need during the war and afterwards."
She has turned the terrible things in her life into something beautiful. Alvera developed this ability in a hopeless situation. She processed her feelings in pictures that she painted - the fear, the insecurity, the helplessness, the anger. "When I heard the bombs, I drew. The sounds of war, my flinching at every bang, moved my pencil," says the young woman, explaining how it all began. But it was only in Lebanon that the young woman had the means and materials to paint professionally enough to show her pictures in exhibitions.
"When I paint, I forget everything and get into a flow: I'm in my world of colours and shapes for eight hours at a time," she says, describing the effect that art has on her. Sometimes she sells her paintings and donates the money to the school she works for when other income is scarce there. "That's beauty for me: being there for others."
