Support Refugee Babies 2018-2019

Here at Support to Life, we operate with full financial and operational transparency. In this vein, we’ve recently completed our Annual Report covering all our activities throughout 2018(English version available on our website soon). Thus in this report, I will use the opportunity to provide all supporters with a recap of the range of activities we’ve implemented to support refugee babies in Turkey.

First off, we start with the baby care packs, which are an integral part of the project we raise funds for here. Throughout 2018, we’ve been able to provide baby care packs for a total of 204 mothers and their babies. That’s more than $14,000 worth of baby care items that have reached directly those who need them the most.

But this is just a “first step” assistance. Let us now forget that the Syrian War is in its 9^th year now and has caused a situation we refer to as “prolonged displacement.” Individuals and families that had to leave their homes due to war began new lives in Turkey and other surrounding countries. Children born back in those early years are now at schooling age. Thus, we care a great deal about facilitating their access to education services. In this context, throughout 2018, we’ve provided “school packs” to 560 children. Inside the backpacks we provided, they found stationary items such as pens, pencils and notebooks.

In addition, we helped 1239 children enroll to school. Simple as it may sound, enrollment processes are easily complicated for Syrians for either bureaucratic reasons or due to the family’s pressing need to maximize the labor potential of their families – resorting to “negative coping mechanisms” such as child labor.

Our support did not end there either, we provided tutoring support for children who have difficulty keeping up with their classes. Even after enrollment, Syrian youth often find it difficult to keep up with their peers due to social cohesion issues, language difficulties or war trauma. In this domain, we helped 789 children with their studies.

Meanwhile, we target parents as well; sensitizing them about the negative effects of child labor, importance of schooling, the hazards of early marriages.

With your support, we continue our activities in 2019. We seek to ensure that, in the prolonged displacement situation that the Syrian crisis is, no kid is left behind.