I was walking along the street near the Sulaimani Bazar when something in front of courthouse caught my eye. I paused. It was an old man with a cane, seated on the sidewalk beside a low table packed with bundles of elastic, dusty packs of gum and other odds and ends. I’d never seen him before, but I knew many things about this man.

His name is Shekh Osman, and he lost his leg to a land mine during the first Gulf War while escaping to Iran. He has nine children, but knows no work to support them aside from selling what he can on the street, which he’s been doing for seventeen years. Business isn’t good, and no one is helping him. “Only God,” he says.

I knew all of this because earlier that day, I was helping one of my journalism students, Payam, with her final project, which happened to be about Shekh Osman.

Payam is a small but exuberant 18-year-old girl who knows where to buy anything at the Sule bazaar and will haggle with taxi drivers until they agree to her price. She is working on starting a radio show, and teaches English to younger children at a language institute. Payam seems completely impervious to the limited freedom for girls in Kurdistan, a place where people click their tongue in disapproval at the very mention of a girl walking alone on the streets, which is aiba, or shameful.

Payam is one of a kind, but she’s not alone. There’s Amanj, a university student who teaches a class about the environment and plans on getting an an advanced degree in environmental engineering abroad so he can come back to Kurdistan and improve things. There’s Broosk, a high school senior who leads a group of other young students in projects like cleaning up the city and raising awareness for kids who work on the street. This week they purchased $400 worth of new clothes to give to the dozens of teenage boys who sell on the street and wouldn’t otherwise be able to buy a new outfit for Eid.

I’ve been very frustrated at times during the past month over what feel like deep-rooted, intractable problems that plague Kurdistan. But these thoughts have no traction when I’m in the presence of Payam and her peers.