SYRIA: How We Are Helping Together
Children’s Hunger Relief Fund has committed to helping hungry children and hopeless families for the past 38 years, and that’s just what we’ve done together with our donors' help. This year, as our International Emergency Relief Team traveled to Jordan and the Syrian Region to help desperate and traumatized Syrian refugees, we continue fulfilling that pledge and our mission. Only weeks ago our CHRF Emergency Relief Director traveled with his team, volunteering to go into harm's way in order to help these innocent victims in their desperate situation. After consulting on the ground with the United Nations Human Rights Council, our team set out to find refugees that NO OTHER relief agencies have helped. Jordan is now home to the second largest refugee camp in the world with a population of over 130,000 people. With this much confusion and disorder going on in the region terrible things can happen, as our team leader reveals in his report from the ground: No matter how many times I walk into such camps, I am never prepared for what I see and experience. How can anyone get used to this? As I speak to people, I hear stories of theft, violence and rape, the gangs roaming around, women and young girls are not safe. This is a dangerous place. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire for many of these people and their families. This camp is already receiving help from other NGOs but there are many thousands of refugees that don’t want to take shelter in these camps and put their children at risk of being raped or harmed. As a husband and father, I know I would not want my family to be in a situation where I couldn’t protect them. We leave the refugee camps where theft and attacks on women and children are numerous and look for the families that have fled for the safety of their children and are trying to survive outside of the refugee camps. These are the families that we came to assist, those that need our help the most, those that aren’t getting help from anyone else. Walking into a room, we find a mother with her four children, sitting on a concrete floor. There is no furniture, hardly any possessions at all. When you have to run for your life at a moment’s notice, all you can grab is your children. The mother tells us about her village being bombed and destroyed. She has no job, no way of providing for her family. There is no “home.” Knowing she will be here a long time, she is worried about her children’s education. When I ask her where her husband is, tears well up in her eyes. She has no idea. We meet another mother with five children. They are living in what looks like a garage, I can tell she is sick. Every word she speaks is filled with fear and desperation. She too has no idea what happened to her husband. What strikes me about these families is that they are dignified and educated, people that had homes and jobs and did the things that most American people would do as a family. They want to work, they want their children to be healthy, educated and safe. I listen, story after horrific story, mass executions, decapitated heads and limbs left outside their homes, villages bombed, the sounds of terrorized people running and screaming, women and little girls being raped, men and boys being tortured. With each story, my nausea spreads. With each story, the agony and sorrow I feel for these people intensifies. This is why we are here, to help these vulnerable and innocent people. To extend your love and generosity to them. A number of men show me their scars from electrical shocks and beatings, broken bones, shrapnel wounds. These men are injured and traumatized but fortunate. They are alive. Children are innocent, precious and special. As a father, I cannot imagine my children going through such horror and trauma, being caught up in a war, witnessing death, losing family members and fleeing for their lives to live as a refugee in another country. One father takes me into his home outside of the village and hands me a cup of tea, sits down beside me, and says, “Listen. And I hear it.” Thud after thud, explosion after explosion, I sit and listen to the bombs falling. With each thud comes that sound that hangs in the air after an explosion. Imagine what these people are experiencing right now. The injuries. The death. The traumas caused by these attacks. I feel sick. The facts cannot be ignored:
- Over 100, 000 people have died in this war
- Two million have been displaced
- More than one million refugees are children
Very clear and focused report on how you guys are getting the job done. Whatever any of us think about the politics and governments involved in all this strife, this story reminds us there are women and children being caught in the cross fire and you have stepped into the humanitarian crisis with a care and food. It’s Feels good to be part of your “team”.