Steve Maman

Steve Maman, (born March 1, 1973), is a Canadian businessman, entrepreneur, social worker and the founder of The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq, also known as the CYCI foundation. Since its inception, Maman's organization has been credited to have rescued over 140 Yazidi and Christian women and girls captured by ISIS and forced into sex slavery.

Steve Maman was born in Morocco on March 1, 1973, and was raised in Montreal, Canada where he would go on to become a vintage cars dealer. Maman is married and is a father of six.

In 2014, Maman connected with negotiators in Baghdad, Iraq to build a network to rescue Yazidi and Christian women and girls sold into sexual servitude by ISIS. In June 2015, Maman founded the CYCI foundation with a team of negotiators in Iraq who would rescue the girls by paying brokers. The foundation started raising funds for their operations through volunteer donations and a GoFundMe account. Maman currently serves as the president of the foundation and it claims to have rescued over 140 women and girls by May 2016. Once rescued, the women and girls are taken to an internally displaced persons camp in Kurdistan and later re-united with their families.

Maman has often mentioned Oskar Schindler as an inspiration for the organization in his interviews and is often referred to as Jewish Schindler by news portals.

Criticism

Members of the Yazidis community which includes Babasheikh Kherto Ismael, the Yazidi spiritual leader, and those involved in outreach and humanitarian support dispute Maman's work and call for a greater transparency and oversight in the work with minority populations fleeing Iraq.