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. 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.