Hasna and her seven children fled the civil war in Syria with practically nothing. Mercy Corps-distributed clothes, blankets, mattresses and gas heating supplies will help them through the winter. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps
This week in the Thought Kitchen, Jeremy Barnicle, Chief Development and Communications Officer for Mercy Corps,?one of our longstanding Partners for Change, travels to Jordan to give us a first hand account of the Syrian refugee crisis and what we can do to help.
Mafraq, Jordan ? I am sitting on the floor of a cold, crumbling single room dwelling just on the Jordan side of the Syria-Jordan border.? I?m sipping Turkish coffee, surrounded by a family of Syrian refugees.? The coffee isn?t warming me up much: it is December and it is freezing.
My host is a lady named Hasna Erhael.? She?s a 36 year old mother of seven, six of whom are girls and are sitting with us.? Her oldest child, a 15-year-old boy, is out collecting recyclables to make some money.? Hasna and her family fled Syria a few months ago when their town came under attack by the Syrian army.? Her husband is back in Syria fighting the regime and says he won?t stop until they have taken Damascus.
They came over the border with nothing, and nothing is pretty much what they still have.? They rent this room with help from relatives.? No work.? No school.? No toys or art supplies.? No furniture. No electricity or heat.? No running water.
I don?t want to make Hasna sound like a victim ? that?s certainly not how she sees herself.? She tells me she and her family just need to be able to eat a little bit and they?ll be able to hold out until the fighting ends and they can return to Syria. But she is nervous for her girls: ?They have nothing to do.? They miss school and they are totally bored.?? They are clearly struggling, and that?s where Mercy Corps comes in.
We are working with a local religious leader to identify Syrian refugees ? more than 15,000 of them are hunkered down among the 60,000 permanent resident ? and help meet some of their basic needs.? Right now, we have the money to help about 1000 refugee families in Mafraq get prepared for winter: that means we?ve giving them winter coats, blankets, kitchen supplies, food packages, gas heaters and gas.? In general, we are a ?hand-up not a hand-out? kind of operation, but in times like this we do our best to bring struggling people some measure of material comfort.? Mercy Corps is providing similar support to Syrian refugees throughout the region.
Mercy Corps is proud to be a partner of Nau.? Support from Nau and its customers allows us to meet the needs of people like Hasna and her family.? For more on our response with Syrian refugees, click here. ?
Jeremy Barnicle at the Zataari refugee camp in Jordan. Mercy Corps drilled the well, which will serve all 40-plus thousand Syrian refugees in the camp, plus tens of thousands who live in neighboring communities.
Source: http://blog.nau.com/2013/01/02/on-the-border-of-syria-a-dispatch-from-mercy-corps/
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