Help Strengthen the Resilience of Syrian Refugees

Dear Supporter,

Below you will find an update from Lebanon written by Concern's Tony Cuddihy. Read on to learn the story of just one of the 55,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon supported with shelter assistance by Concern in 2019. All thanks to generous supporters like you. Thank you.

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With 1.5 million people having fled Syria for neighboring Lebanon in the largest refugee crisis since World War II, your support has been crucial in helping some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The nine-year Syrian crisis has taken a huge toll on families who have fled from their home country to Lebanon in search of safety. Those arriving in Lebanon have lost everything; their homes, their possessions and often, tragically, their loved ones. Thousands of people are now living in makeshift shelters, having difficulty accessing clean and safe drinking water, and struggling on a daily basis as they try to create a better life for themselves and for their children.

Thankfully, our supporters are helping us to make a difference as we endeavor to provide safety and security to those who need it the most. Your help means that these families can start to recover from the trauma of living in fear of their lives and restore their sense of dignity and confidence.

For 30-year-old Rana, life changed dramatically once she and her family were left with no choice but to leave their home in Syria. Rana and her husband Ibrahim had enjoyed a happy, quiet life at home before conflict broke out. When violence reached their town, the family was left with no choice but to leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs and cross the border into Lebanon.

“We brought nothing when we fled from Syria, just my children and the clothes that I was wearing,” she tells Concern. “We used all of our savings and we were left with nothing. We paid everything we had to get here.”

Left with nothing on their arrival in Lebanon, the family had no choice but to set up home in a flimsy tent with no protection from the cold. Lebanon’s punishing winters mean that a bitter chill runs through the shelter.

“When the winds come, we cannot sleep at all and when the rains came, the water came across the room. We put the children on the pile of mattresses to keep them safe from the water and my husband had to go outside to try to make a drain to stop the water from coming into the tent. We also put stones on the roof to try to keep the tarps from blowing off in the winds. We get very afraid that the whole roof will collapse on our head.”

This was no way for a family to live but, with your help, Concern has been able to provide life-saving essentials to Rana and her loved ones. We will continue to check in on the family to make sure they receive the support they need.

“Concern have given us tarpaulins, mattresses, blankets and diapers. The team regularly visit us and see what we need,” Rana explains. Giving Rana the means to look after her children has empowered her and enabled her to live with dignity.

Dear Supporter,

As children in the US and elsewhere have been returning to school over the last few weeks, getting access to education continues to be a challenge for thousands of Syrian children living in Turkey.

Amid the upheaval of conflict, it is often children who feel the greatest impact. Forced from their homes and living in strange and uncertain surroundings, the day-to-day realities of life are left behind and this often includes access to education.

Rather than attending school and building a positive future, children are frequently left with no choice but to work to help support their families – a decision that can have repercussions for the rest of their lives.

This was the case for 14-year-old Fadi, whose family moved to southeast Turkey to escape the ongoing violence in Syria. With his family suffering from ongoing financial difficulties, he began to work with father Hassan in a bakery for up to seven hours a day but he secretly dreamt of returning to school to learn and play with his friends.

“I didn’t like working that much, I wanted to go to school,” said Fadi. His father Hassan worried about how he and his family were going to make ends meet, and he believed that children should work as soon as they were old enough. But when he enrolled Fadi in a psychosocial support program operated by Concern, one of the facilitators pointed out the importance of education for the young teenager.

“For us, we have always believed that a child can work as soon as he’s big enough. We weren’t thinking of how the child feels,” said Hassan.

Hassan himself also enrolled in a Caregivers Engagement program, a project funded by generous donors such as European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and run by Concern, to address the reasons why up to 40% of Syrian children in Turkey are not attending school.

These reasons can include everything from the need for children to work and support family income, low literacy rates and missed years of education, fear or lack of interest in school and an absence of school transportation services.

As part of the Caregivers course, Syrian families come together to share experiences and discuss how to support their children's development, wellbeing and learning. It has had a huge effect on Hassan and his family, with the father-of-seven revealing that it changed his relationship with his children for the better.

“To be honest, I thought the sessions were going to be empty time, you know. I wanted to work and earn money instead. But the opposite was true, I benefited a lot.”

He continued, “I did change my behavior with my children because of the course. When one of them was upset or uncomfortable, I talked to him instead of hitting or shouting, or telling him to go away. You have to understand why he is feeling or acting this way. They are comfortable with me, they feel close to me and come to sit beside me because they are not afraid and they feel I understand them. I take time with them.”

Fadi is now excelling in his studies at a Turkish public school, where he says his favorite subjects are math and art. He now dreams of becoming a teacher and Hassan is hugely proud of his progress.

“He has Syrian and Turkish friends, and his Turkish language is excellent - he can even write. I attend all the meetings and events at school, and I talk with his teachers to see how he is doing.”

He concluded, “I swear, education is the most important thing. All parents should care about the education of their children. I am not educated. I only reached sixth grade… I can’t read or write so I didn’t have this idea in the past. But seeing my child learning, it’s another world.”

Thanks to the extremely generous support of individuals like you, Concern can continue to transform attitudes, and change the course of young lives. Thank you.