Local businesswoman and humanitarian Juliet Bill is travelling to Iraq in June to help support survivors of an ISIS genocide.

Juliet, who owns the Old Bakery restaurant in Kingsbridge, is travelling to Iraq with a “small group of independent but extremely effective volunteers” to spend time with the survivors of the ISIS genocide on Mount Sinjar.

The people Juliet will be meeting and supporting in Iraq are the remaining family members of some of those refugees she spent time with in January and February in Greece. As always, her trip is completely self-funded, and she says she has “completely fallen” for the people she has met.

Juliet explained: “In August 2014, ISIS descended on the town and region of Sinjar in Iraq. They came quickly and decisively with one aim - torturous annihilation. They massacred, murdered, tortured, humiliated and captured.

“Men and boys were rounded up, their mothers and sisters taken as sex slaves. A few thousand managed to flee to the mountains. Of these thousands many hundreds died of exposure and thirst and hunger. Those who have survived live in pitiful refugee camps.

“As a group of humanitarians we have collectively seen many refugee camps and can concur that Mount Sinjar is without doubt the most abandoned and forgotten....they have, literally, nothing.

“We want to provide basic primary level education to the under 12’s and improve daily living standards for the 2,000 plus families that are residing on Mount Sinjar.

“It is not just a case of alleviating immediate suffering, but providing some kind of future for these gentle, knowledge hungry, ambitious, resilient, resourceful children of possibly the world’s most persecuted people.

“With your help we can establish a long term, effective program of counselling, life skills, education and basic standards of living.”

To raise funds, Juliet is holding an event in the Old Bakery, Kingsbridge, on Thursday, May 18. Tickets are £30 for two courses of middle eastern inspired food and a glass or two with £20 of the price going directly to the survivors.