Projects

The Iraqi-American National Network (IANN) is a project sponsored by the Free Iraq Foundation. The main aim of the IANN is to support, nurture and build the capacity of emerging Iraqi communities across the US. It aims to connect these rising organizations with each other and with senior, more established Iraqi organizations. The concept of the network has grown out of three years of strategic planning initiated by the Foundation’s Iraqi Community Organizations Program (ICOP), and has implemented ideas from other organizational models.

The goals of the IANN are to:

1. Build the capacity of emerging Iraqi civil society groups to become independent, sustainable community-based organizations by:

providing training and technical assistance in oragaizational development

Leveraging national funding to support community projects

Disseminate lessons learned

2. Facilitate the sharing of information and coordination of activities and strategies among Iraqi community organizations. In achiving this goal the IANN will:

Organize a national conference

produce a quarterly newspaper

Maintain and update the IANN website with current information

3. Conduct outreach to educate mainstream society about issues affecting the Iraqi community in the US.The IANN will:

Inform the Iraq communities about national issues that affect them

Faciliate an outreach program to educate mainstream society

Network with other national refugee and immigration organization

In light of these goals, and with your partnership participation we can achieve these objectives by taking the necessary steps as follows:

1. Establishing a structure of collaboration among the various Iraqi-American organizations.

2. Establishing and maintaining a database of Iraqi-American organizations and groups, as well as Iraqi individuals interested in the network.

3. Forming an advisory committee of representatives from the organizations willing to become partners in these efforts.

This network will serve all Iraqis in the US, but can only succeed with the assistance of everyone. We hope that your contributions and the scope of our collaboration will enhance these projects.