Help Strengthen the Resilience of Syrian Refugees

Dear Supporter,

Concern Worldwide continues to help Syrian refugees meet their most urgent needs, and we are grateful for your generous support which helps make this work possible. As part of our response to the Syria crisis in Turkey, Concern conducts a protection program covering southeastern Turkey, which supports Syrian refugees residing outside of refugee camps through a Special Needs Fund.

For refugees living outside of camps, it can be difficult to access necessary services due to a lack of information, language barriers, different interpretations of the entitlements made available by various service providers, or the services simply not being available.  Without access to these services, significant issues relating to protection, health, and education are present and growing as the refugee caseload increases. The Special Needs Fund addresses these issues by using e-vouchers or in-kind support to fill in the gaps in services including basic needs (food, clothing, and education), health care assistance (medical equipment, medication, etc.); food; materials (blankets, clothes, household needs, etc.); shelter; transportation (for example, to travel to a hospital in another city); and document translation needed to facilitate access to available services such as legal assistance.

Concerns manages the Special Needs Fund with local partner Bunian Association, which is led by a team of dedicated Syrians. In late December, Concern staff, accompanied by Bunian staff, visited a family who has benefited from the Special Needs Fund project. We learned about their journey from Syria to Turkey, their needs, and their feelings about the support they are receiving.  Here is a report on their visit:

We passed a short archway and climbed up a small narrow staircase to reach the tin door of a house in the center of the city. The area is colloquially referred to as the Syrian section now that the majority of the small homes are occupied by refugee families. Just past the front door, a blanket hung in the entrance of the living room, to protect from chilling breezes passing through the house. Another blanket was also hanging behind the living room door to keep the place where the family spends most of its time more protected from the cold weather. Passing through the door and the blankets, the living room was warm enough, especially closer to the heater in the middle of it.

There are four people in the family: the husband Yahea*, who is disabled, his wife Reem, who wears a bright floral head scarf, and two little children, a young girl, Lama, aged 20 months, jumping in her mother’s arms in a pink winter jumpsuit, and a boy, Ahmad, who is almost four years old and shies away from the attention of visitors.

Yahea began our conversation by first expressing his thanks to Bunian and Concern teams for supporting his family, repeating that this was the first assistance the family received since they arrived in Turkey about four months ago. Continuing the conversation, he tells the story of their journey from Syria to Turkey, saying that they attempted the illegal journey twice by paying smugglers to help them along the way. The first time, the smugglers kept his money and disappeared, leaving him with nothing to show for his efforts. He said there was no choice but to try again, because the option to return home had disappeared, as the area was ridden with violence and there was no insurance of his family’s safety. While the journey ahead was risky, he felt that returning home would be even more dangerous.

After paying the second smuggler,  Yahea said they walked for about three hours with whatever belongings they could carry, with his wife and him taking turns to carry little Lama. Yahea has problems with both of his legs – one was hit by shrapnel during an explosion in his home town, which is still in his leg, and causes him great pain as he walks. His disability posed a huge challenge, and he was completely exhausted during the journey. He typically uses a crutch but during the journey he had to throw away the crutch so he could help his wife carry the children.

The family finally reached the city center of their new home in Turkey. They were very tired and were almost out of money. Yahea recounts walking around the streets of his new home looking for signs in Arabic to lead him to an organization that could possibly help his family. This is how he came to the Bunian small medical clinic for persons affected with war injuries. Bunian staff took Yahea to a Turkish hospital, where an appointment was given to him for a surgery for one of his legs.

After the surgery, the Bunian team contacted the family and came for an assessment at their home, inquiring about the family’s circumstances to determine how they could assist them through Concern’s Special Needs Fund. “Of course we needed many things but priorities were for food and a heater. I cannot work due to my injuries so my wife is the only worker in the family – she is a house cleaner for a Turkish family and receives 300 Turkish Lira per month (approximately 100 US dollars), which is mainly being used to pay for rent and other bills. We are not able to save any money to be able to afford a heater or even to provide enough food to our children. We didn’t even have a stove or gas to cook food.” Through the Special Needs Fund, Bunian was able to provide a heater, wood, stove, gas and a food basket containing one months’ worth of nutritious items, meeting the family’s most pressing needs.

During our visit, Concern staff asked Reem about her current job. A bit embarrassed, Reem said “I’m working as a cleaner for a Turkish family, and I’m taking care of the elderly grandmother.” Yahea said that while Reem is away during the day, he takes care of the children, which can be quite challenging given his disability.

In response to this conversation, Concern gave the family information and contacts relating to Concern’s ongoing livelihoods programming in the area, which provides technical vocational training and helps trainees find jobs within the community. Both Yahea and Reem now plan to participate and build their skills in search of well-paying and secure jobs. Thanks in part to your contributions, the family can look forward to the possibility of a safe, new life in Turkey where they can provide for their children and look towards the future.

*All names have been changed to protect the privacy and security of people.

Dear Supporter, 

Concern Worldwide continues to help Syrian refugees meet their most urgent needs, and we are grateful for your generous support which helps make this work possible. One of our most successful efforts has been the e-voucher program, which enable Syrian refugees in Southeastern Turkey to buy basic items, including food, hygiene items, household items, shoes, clothes, and fuel from local stores in each district. This program helps refugees live with dignity in the communities in which they have settled and integrate into Turkish society and community life. 

Concern has been implementing the e-voucher program in Sanliurfa Province, which has the greatest concentration of Syrian refugees of any single province in Turkey. our team on the ground uses a vulnerability criteria to identify beneficiaries of this program, taking into consideration things like single-parent households, gender and age of heads of household, income generation potential, and chronic illness or disability. In August 2016, the project team identified 10,808 vulnerable households in Sanliurfa Provice to receive e-voucher support, which ultimately reached 33,512 individuals during the month of September. Of the e-voucher funds distributed in September, 88.7% of the funding was spent on food, 10.1% was spend on materials relating to hygiene, 0.6% was spent on clothing and 0.6% was spent on materials such as water and gas. 

Today I would like to share a story about one woman who has benefited from the e-voucher program. (Names have been changed for privacy.) Maryam is a 43-year -old refugee from the northern city of Al-Hassakah, Syria. When the security situation worsened four years ago, Maryam and a few of her relatives fled Syria and settled in the southeastern border town of Ceylanpinar, Turkey. 

In keeping with cultural norms, Maryam was only 15 years old when she married her cousin. She said she was told he would make her happy, but he didn’t. Scared and confused, Maryam filed for divorce and went back to live with her sick mother, whom she looked after for the next 23 years. Maryam refused to marry again, choosing instead to work in agriculture in Al-Hassakah to sustain her life and provide for her mother. Through her hard work and determination, she was able to build her own house – a feat she was happy and satisfied by. Maryam’s mother passed away four years ago. “She was lucky because she didn’t witness the horrible war,” Maryam said.

After Maryam was displaced and fled to Turkey, her successes in Al-Hassakah felt irrelevant. She first moved in with relatives who, facing their own challenges, were abusive and unsupportive. They convinced her that marrying a Turkish man was the only way to salvage her situation. Seeing no other options, she unhappily complied with a marriage. However, the marriage did not last long as the man was already married to another Syrian woman who did not take kindly to sharing her husband with Maryam and made daily life extremely difficult for her. Knowing the marriage would not work, Maryam sought divorce for the second time in her life.

Maryam now lives in a single-room house in the far-flung district of Ceylanpinar, where very few NGOs are providing support for refugees. Last year she tried her hand at her old agriculture business in Turkey but the low compensation and the strain of the work made it difficult for her to continue. “I wish that I could work as I did in the past, but everything changed,” she explained. “I am 43 now and I’m not healthy.” She was thankful for the neighbors and friends who helped her with some money to pay rent, but she needs a more suitable place to live than her current damaged dwelling.

Concern Worldwide is one of the only NGOs providing support to refugees in the hard-to-reach corners of Sanliurfa Province, including Ceylanpinar District. Through e-voucher support from Concern, Maryam is able to afford food – so at least this one burden is alleviated. “Thanks a lot for helping me. Now I don’t feel alone or forgotten,” she says to the staff who visit her regularly to check on her status. Maryam has had a rough life from a very early age, and these challenges have only been exacerbated by the war and displacement. With continued support from Concern, Maryam can hope for a better future and the possibility of returning home when the war ends.