Lucia, Italian, and Ash, Australian, have been collaborating and working with STEP-IN since 2018 and they have contributed to many projects of the organization, including this book for which they wrote some of the stories and helped with the editing. Their contribution has also been very important as they helped fill the gaps in the stories and support the team.

Haidar also used to be a STEP-IN’s employee and, as a Yazidi man, he has experienced the brutal violence of 2014 on his own skin. Accordingly, contributing into putting together this book was challenging, but important for him as he often represented his community and gave voice to their collective mourning. Haidar is also an expert in Iraqi history and Yazidi culture, and he was essential for the authenticity of the book. With his great knowledge and perfect English he conducted a lot of research and even contributed to the texts directly.

Yonan is an Iraqi nurse originally from Qaraqosh, a Christian town in the north of Iraq. He has worked with STEP-IN since the organisation’s early days in 2015 and he has been a major actor in so many STEP-IN’s projects. For the book, Yonan helped Ivanka to conduct the interviews acting as an interpreter and much more than that. Writing about events that personally affected him was hard, but Yonan still decided to help, and his kindness and intelligence have been essential to put together a critical but compassionate book.

Matus normally works as a photographer in Copenhagen, but since the book project started, he has been responsible for collecting the book’s visual material. Specifically, Matus put together the photo-documentation of the book joining the team on the ground on multiple occasions. His ideas and skills have been essential to the project.

Kate is passionate young writer born in England from Scottish heritage. In 2018 she graduated from KCL in Global Health and Social Medicine, and she has always wanted to be involved in humanitarian creative projects since then. She has spent the last year working on the stories and she did most of the adapting and the editing.

Kasia, a Polish humanitarian worker, joined STEP-IN as an assistant manager in November 2018. Before working with STEP-IN, she lived in many different countries and her wisdom has been essential to the organization. She took on a lot of responsibility for the book, coordinating the work between different stakeholders and carrying out a lot of the editing and research as well.

Filip is a Slovakian artist specialised in the graphic design of books. He joined the project in 2020 when he was contacted to start working on the outlook of the book and he agreed to visit Iraq to get a full understanding of the whole project and meet the team. Filip infected everyone with his enthusiasm and has been responsible for curing the originaldesign of the book.

As STEP-IN’s field coordinator in Erbil Betka provided logistics support to Ivanka and her team. She has also contributed to collection of content by participating in one of the interviews and providing detailed report of the encounter.

Zuzana and Przemek are the founders and principal project managers of STEP-IN. They are this kind of rare people that can publish a book while managing a medical NGO in Iraq and they have blessed the team with constant support and encouragement. Putting together this book has been an interesting challenge for them and the fact that the book is finally completed is a testament to their perseverance.