More than 5.5 million children have been displaced in and around Syria. Education, security, security – that is what they need most. And you, dear readers, contribute to this: by supporting our big campaign “A scarf for life” again this year. You can read what you can do here.
When the parents told her to pack, they were no longer safe at home, Lara *, then 4, stuffed her favorite toys into a bag. She thought it was only for a short time, the shelling would stop and afterwards they could go back to their house in Idlib, a region in northwest Syria. She hasn’t unpacked the bag since.
She has been on the run for three years, together with her parents and eight siblings. Like 6.7 million other people in Syria, they are internally displaced. People who have to live permanently in their own country in reception camps and transition camps because their home villages and neighborhoods have been shot at or starved by the regime. At the moment the family lives in a camp in the countryside in a thin tent. Parents fear winter, snow, and even more the day when there is no longer enough food for everyone – according to the UN, more than 13 million people depend on humanitarian organizations. In the region where Lara and her family live, almost every third child is chronically malnourished. Lara’s family endures, endures. It is not a life.
We have already achieved a lot
Last year we reported in BRIGITTE on families who are internally displaced in Syria and have to cope with the poorest of circumstances. And you, dear readers, responded with great compassion and more than 460,000 euros donated for our campaign “A scarf for life”. You have done a lot of good with it, turned fate, very specifically given hope, in Syria and in the neighboring countries, which have taken in more than 80 percent of those who fled Syria. Together with the independent children’s rights organization Save the Children let’s continue our relief effort in the eighth year. Again we ask you to help the children. Because war is still raging in Syria, hunger and dying continue, even if the gaze of the media and that of the international community keeps turning to other, acutely crisis-ridden regions.
The Syrian children still need your support; We would like to say thank you – and show what effect it can have if you work permanently and competently like Save the Children and its local partner organizations for the refugees. With your help, Save the Children was able to set up five learning and play rooms in the camps in northern Syria. Local helpers trained volunteer teachers and ensured that 1200 girls and boys received teaching materials and that they could be taught again in the long term.
To a better future
Lara, for example, is now entering Learning center in their camp; it’s not a school, but a place where she can learn the alphabet, play with other children and try out new things: do handicrafts, whisper a story in the neighbour’s ear by silent mail, sing with everyone. She now has books with simple words under colorful drawings, some of which she can already decipher. And she receives support, psychologically and socially, which helps her to better adjust to other children. She has become happier again, says her mother. Lara doesn’t want to unpack her bag with the toys until she gets home.
1200 children from the camps can now go to school – thanks to your help
They also helped karma, and drove them out in their own country. She is 33, the mother of three children and the foster mother of three others who have lived in her family since their mother was killed in a bomb attack in Karma’s home village. Karma’s husband is a shepherd, he cannot earn any money with it in the camp where they currently live. Their third child gave birth to Karma in June; shortly before the delivery she visited the team of a mobile Health station, the Save the Children financed with donations from the scarf campaign. The doctors and social workers care for babies and young mothers, also provide psychological support, and fight against the rampant malnutrition of the youngest with screenings. The food situation has deteriorated further as a result of the Corona, because the distribution of food, water and medicines is no longer possible at times. So far, the team has been able to care for a total of 8,400 small children, mothers and pregnant women.
Educate and take away the fear
She felt terribly under pressure, Karma told the Mobil team, she was very afraid that she would not be able to breastfeed or that her milk would not be nutritious. But she also has no money for baby milk. She got her older daughters through with cow’s milk and watery starch, but she couldn’t even pay for that anymore.
The team at the health station encouraged her, showed her the best way to breastfeed and regulate milk in good time before the delivery, explained why breastfeeding is so important, and also talked to her about her psychological problems. In the first month after the birth, she visited her regularly and stayed in contact via WhatsApp – until Karma was ready to breastfeed her baby on her own, which is now working well.
In the past year, all donations went to projects within Syria; but the aid in Lebanon also continues and needs your support. There has been the situation for the 1.5 million Syrian refugees further aggravated, also because the country itself has been economically at an end since the destructive explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 at the latest. The currency is declining, medical care has collapsed. Medicines, electricity, gasoline and a lot of food are scarce, no longer available or, if they are, almost unaffordable.
Everyday life is characterized by exclusion and poverty
The desperation of the Lebanese is also felt by the Syrian children. They are being bullied more and more frequently, in school and on the street. The twelve-year-old Layla experienced it. She has lived with her parents, her 13-year-old brother and six-year-old sister for six years in the Bekaa plain, a plateau in the east of the country. In the past, in Syria, the parents had good jobs, the mother as a tour guide, and the father in the Ministry of Agriculture. Now they live in a shabby house, the mother works off the rent in the landlord’s household, twelve, thirteen hours a day.
Layla’s father and her older brother are looking for work during the time, most recently they worked at a market at the vegetable stand. Layla would also go to work to help, she has already offered her parents, but they don’t allow it. She now does the housework, cleans, cooks, takes care of grandmother and little sister. The best moment of the day, she says, is when everyone is still together at breakfast. She no longer goes to school because she had a difficult time in class. The others bullied her because of her clothes, her accent. Nobody was allowed to be friends with her; If Layla did find a friend, they put her under pressure: Why are you talking to her? It’s from Syria. She is poor.
It is as if the older she gets, the fears grow with her.
Layla couldn’t defend herself, she withdrew, had nightmares. Her parents haven’t let her out of the house since then. “Layla cried more and more,” says her mother. “It’s as if the older she gets, the fears grow with her.”
Her salvation was a computer course Save the Children near you. She now goes there three times a week. Because the path is safe, parents allow it. She soaks up all of the knowledge she has, and she has already attended an English course. The courses are not a substitute for a degree, but they do strengthen your self-confidence. She hardly ever has nightmares, she says.
Instead of childhood, work calls
Eight-year-old Walid is a boy with a fighter look, he likes to cross his arms in photos and scowl. He’s got used to it on the street, where he sells paper tissues, from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. Or he went around the neighborhood collecting plastic from trash cans and selling it. He made a dollar a day like that.
He is the eldest of three siblings, the family lives in Beirut, the father rarely finds work, and he, too, sometimes collects bottles. Your apartment consists of one room; the house was damaged by the harbor explosion, but is habitable, say the landlords. If you ask the mother why her son had to work, she says: “We had no choice.”
Walid was beaten a lot, in the street, picking up bottles or wandering around. He withdrew and was often sad, especially because he really wanted to go to school – neither he nor his brothers had ever attended school.
I wanted my siblings to stop crying from hunger.
Walid says: “I hated work, but I had to help my father, he is always tired. And I wanted my siblings to stop crying from hunger.” If child labor cannot be prevented in any other way than by alleviating immediate material hardship, granted Save the Children Cash help, in the case of Walid’s family, around $ 180 a month. The Save team also explained to the parents what it means for Walid’s life if he does not go to school and at the same time has to shoulder a responsibility that is far too great for him. And it made them realize how badly he needs his parents when he’s feeling down or getting aggressive.
Walid no longer has to work. He has been able to go to school regularly since this school year. His mother says she has not seen him as happy for a long time as when the Save team gave him his new books and notebooks. Walid says he wants to build houses one day – especially a big, stable one for his whole family.
* All names changed to protect the refugees
Help for children
Save the Children has been helping in the region since the beginning of the Syria conflict more than ten years ago. Child protection and education are in the foreground, but the NGO also supports families with cash, among other things. Other focal points are hygiene education, health care and the procurement of material for the accommodations.
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