Iraqis coming to Utah to learn, give thanks

Ten Iraqi women will visit Utah this week to learn how to better their families, their communities, their country and their future.

The delegation, including former minister of state for women's affairs Azhar Abdul Karem Al-Shakly, also will express thanks for aid sent from Utah to the war-bruised nation.

The women will stay in Salt Lake City with host families and attend workshops on leadership, cottage industries and problem solving. They will meet representatives of Operation Give, a Utah-based organization that provides food and survival materials in Iraq.

They also will quilt, sew and assemble aid kits at the American Fork Humanitarian Project, attend the University of Utah's World Trade Center Day and go to a "Hugs for Healing" tea with wives and mothers whose sons and daughters have died in the Iraq war.

This is the second trip for Iraqi women associated with a nonprofit group called F.U.T.U.R.E, which stands for Families United Toward Universal Respect.

It was created in 2005 by an LDS couple in Virginia, Fareed Betros and his wife, Joan Betros, who had lived and worked in Iraq. Fareed was a senior Middle East adviser to U.S. reconstruction efforts, while Joan was director of family television programming for Iraqi Media Network.

Joan Betros told her Iraqi associates about the LDS Relief Society's program in which pairs of women visit neighboring women every month or so to offer a spiritual message as well

as to assess their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. They then report the needs back to a supervisor, who tries to find ways to help.

When Betros described this system to an Iraqi woman who worked on the Baghdad Advisory Board, she responded enthusiastically, saying, "We have to have this model in our country to heal the family and unite women."

So Betros created F.U.T.U.R.E and, in May 2006, brought the first delegation to Utah. Since then, the group has established an organization in Iraq called Women for Future -- Iraq. It created a three-tiered "visiting guide program" in which three women get together as partners and meet with other families, then report to supervisors at a local, district and national level. They sponsor regular conferences to teach families about home and stress management, conflict resolution, family unity, and how to build self-confidence, character and social skills in children.

The Relief Society definitely is "one of the models we have used to create our structure," said Salt Lake City resident Jan Garbett, a F.U.T.U.R.E board member. "But we have been able to expand and bring in other faiths."

Another LDS idea that F.U.T.U.R.E has introduced to its Iraqi counterparts is the once-a-week get-togethers known as Family Home Evening. The group distributed to its partners a generic home-evening manual with lessons about virtues such as honesty but without any religious content.

"We had the manual printed in Arabic," Garbett said. "This is a program for any women to teach their own values to their children and to strengthen their home."

One of the most poignant moments for Garbett came when an Iraqi woman told her, "We need to teach our children how to forgive."

The group is not a religious or political organization, is not connected to the LDS Church and does not allow any proselytizing. Women in the delegation are Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. American F.U.T.U.R.E women also come from a variety of religious or secular traditions.

"We are all women," Garbett said. "We are sisters, helping each other."

pstack@sltrib.com