A woman's book about the legacy of her remarkable Dutch-Canadian grandmother is helping women in Iraq recover from war. Karen Vos Braun, a Waterloo teacher who earned her education degree at the University of Western Ontario, is giving part of the proceeds from the sale of The Wisdom of Oma to Women for Women International, an aid agency with an emergency fund for Iraq.

Braun started writing the book shortly after her grandmother Johanna Vos died in 2001.

Vos, who was born in 1914, had been a nurse in the Netherlands during the Second World War when she also hid Jewish citizens, a medical missionary in the South American country of Suriname, an immigrant to Kitchener and the owner-operator of one of the first hospitals for disabled children in Canada.

Braun and her sister were visiting their grandmother, known by the Dutch name Oma, in palliative care. The sisters were singing their grandmother's favourite hymns to her when she passed away.

Her funeral drew people from all over the world who had been touched by her. Braun began jotting down all the advice she remembered or heard that her grandmother had offered.

"At the beginning, I think it was more of a healing process that I was sitting down and remembing all the wisdom she had given me so I could retain these memories."

But others who saw the manuscript encouraged her to publish it.

Rather than a biography, The Wisdom of Oma (Inner Voice/Baird O'Keefe Publishing, $16.95) contains 23 expressions from Oma with commentaries by Braun.

The book's first print run last year was sold only in Canada. A second run this summer will be larger to add the U.S. market.

Braun says she chose Women for Women because it works with women who have survived war and other conflicts until they are ready to stand on their own. Its primary tool is a $25-a-month sponsorship of women by women. But it also has an emergency fund for reconstruction in Iraq.

"It's really exciting because I think my Oma's mission in life was to help those who could not help themselves.

"So I foresaw this as a way to continue the legacy," Braun says.

Braun will be speaking in London on Sept. 17 at The Circle at Brescia College.

Her book is stocked by Chapters, Coles and Indigo bookstores.