In August 2014, Shammo Murad was one of over 400,000 Yazidis who fled as Islamic State seized the Iraqi city of Sinjar, killing men and kidnapping women as they went. Finding refuge in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq, he is now doing all he can to pick up the pieces of a shattered community.
His first priority has been education. To be illiterate, he says, is like "being at a wedding but not being able to hear the band or the singer or anyone."
Taking just one day off per week, Shammo is helping to teach over 1400 students in the camp school. Realising there are also hundreds of older men who have never learned to read or write, he set up a literacy class for them as well.
Hanging over every class, however, is the thought of the thousands of girls still held in captivity by Islamic State. Their suffering should not just be an offence to fellow Yazidis, he says, but to "the honour of anyone who has a conscience."
