War has served as a backdrop for much of Rejna Alaaldin’s life.  Born into a world of conflict during the Iran-Iraq War as her parents fled persecution from Saddam Hussein’s forces, the Iraqi Kurd sought asylum in the UK, were she grew up and trained to become a lawyer.

It was following the 2003 Iraq War that Rejna moved back to her homeland where she established her own legal services and advisory firm. Today, she’s taken to championing women’s rights, particularly in the workplace.

“I moved back because I wanted to help with nation building,” she says. “This region needs expertise, especially women, to come here and work.”

As Iraq and in particular the Kurdistan Region opened up to the world, the private sector began to thrive, creating job opportunities for a population that had traditionally relied on the government for work.

This long-term reliance on the public sector reduced the need to be competitive when seeking employment and many young graduates lack the skills necessary to apply for a job.

It was when Rejna was looking to hire someone for her own company that she came up with the idea for a network to help young women sharpen their CV and interview skills. “A girl showed up randomly without having applied and I asked her for her CV and she said: I don’t have anything, I’m about to finish university and I just want a job, so we sat and I asked her to tell me about herself,” says Rejna.

The young woman was shy and seemed reluctant to tell Rejna one of her main skills – helping her mum make Kurdish dresses. “It took a while to get it out of her, she didn’t want to talk about it because she thought it was simple. But I told her it showed attention to detail, organisation skills and ability to communicate,” she says.

Rejna came across others who lacked basic interview and CV skills when filling the vacancy and so she decided to launch the network, AllforOne last year to support young women and girls, promoting equality, education and entrepreneurship.

AllforOne acts as a support system for young women looking for jobs, from providing training and advice on how to prepare and conduct themselves in interviews to a mentorship programme that offers one-on-one guidance.

There are already a handful of companies in Kurdistan that offer such services, but the majority charge substantial fees.

“There’s no service targeting the most vulnerable, the people I’m helping do not have the money to pay for such training and assistance,” says Rejna.

In a bid to inspire girls to aim high and follow their dreams, Rejna launched the voices of women campaign on social media. Through the #vow hashtag, women and girls shared their success stories on Twitter, Facebook and the AllforOne website.

“What is sometimes lacking here is strong female role models, we need to see more women engaging with younger girls and providing guidance to them,” she says.

So far, Rejna has a handful of mentors and is looking to attract more.

“We’ve recently had international interest, from America, France and Dubai,” she says. “It’s always best to have face-to-face interactions, but when we have someone based abroad, we put them in touch with the girls via Skype, emails or phone calls, which we pay for.”

Mentors are assigned depending on the individual needs of the girls. So far, AllforOne has helped girls in secondary school all the way up to those in their late twenties. But due to the patriarchal nature of the society, there are still many barriers to entry in the workplace for young women in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq.

Rejna also works with a couple of non-governmental organisations advocating better gender equality laws to end discrimination and violence against women as well as increasing access to education for girls. As a programme manager at the Emma charity, Rejna is working with the Education Ministry to change the portrayal of women in textbooks, taking them away from the traditional roles as mothers and homemakers to more active members of society.

But the pace of change is slow especially since the economic situation has worsened, with internal political conflicts and yet another war: with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to blame.

“A lot of people left due to the security and economic crisis,” says Rejna. “It was always set in my mind that I’m here for the long term, I want to see the objectives I have set to be achieved and I’m here for the good times and the bad times.”

Amid the destruction and chaos unleashed by ISIS, it was the Kurdish female fighters that stood out as the champions of freedom and humanity. Propelled into the spotlight in the Western media, they became a symbol of modernity and strength, an image that Kurdish leaders embraced.

“In the most difficult and trying times, our women stepped up and proved they are just as capable as men,” says Rejna. “But what happens after they leave the peshmerga? Will they still be discriminated against as women?”

According to Rejna these women had an impact on the portrayal of women peshmerga and not women in general, and it requires a change in legislation, better education and cultural shift to stamp out the discrimination and suppression of women in Kurdistan and Iraq.

“I never thought I would be involved in women’s rights to this extent, but living here and witnessing the injustice and how much women are supressed within the workforce, pushed me to establish AllforOne,” she says. “We want to inspire girls and see them become decision makers.”