This week I had a truly eye-opening experience. After months of waiting, the week had finally arrived where I would travel north to the Syrian border to work with Syrian refugee children through Project Amal ou Salam.
Project Amal ou Salam is a week long camp for Syrian Refugee children. We had 20 volunteers fly in from around the world to participate. In this week, I worked with close to 1,000 Syrian Refugee children. I really had no idea what I was in for before the week began, but now that it has ended, it is time for me to reflect on what just happened.
I was a team leader for “Fareek al-Ahmar” (Team Red). Between me and one other girl, we were assigned to take care of up to 50 Syrian Refugee children each day, between the ages of 5-13. I have held many internships in my life dealing with international affairs, but this was the first time I actually found myself in the field, dealing first hand with refugees. Every day, we arrived early morning at the venue we had rented out for the camp. The children would arrive and we split them up based on their age groups. We took them around all day to different workshops including sports, photography, art, music and team building/trust building. A lot of these kids don’t even go to school, and this was the one-day they had a chance to experience the life of a child. It was a day of empowerment for them, as we asked them to rebuild Syria in art class, taught them about viewing one issue from different perspectives in photography class, and more. At the end of each day, we I was met with hard goodbyes from the kids, as they made me promise that I would see them again the next day.
Every day, little Syrian refugees came in from all walks of life, but they had one thing in common: they all had their childhoods ripped away from them. I was so shocked to discover so many things. I noticed kids without limbs, kids with scars all over their face, kids in extreme distress. Throughout the days, we would feed the children breakfast, lunch and a snack, yet many of them kept coming up to me and telling me they were hungry. I found out later that they were quietly saving the food we were giving them to bring home to their siblings. I found out that many of them did not have both parents, or any parents. I witnessed with my own eyes six year olds screaming chants about bringing down the regime, bringing down Bashaar Assad.
As I was talking to these children, I gained more and more knowledge about their backgrounds. Engaging in conversations with these little kids, I learned how much they knew about the world. They knew all about the war, they knew about nationalism, they knew about pain, hunger, death and suffering. They have been through more than any human should ever go through, and at such a young age. Their ‘backpacks’ that they carried were small black totes with the title “UNHCR” written across them. These were the refugees; these were the kids that were in such a devastating place in life that aid had to be delivered.
One thing I noticed as well was that these kids never smiled in the photos I took. The only time they did smile was when I caught them actually being happy. It’s very interesting since we grew up our lives learning that you should always smile in pictures. These kids only smile when they actually feel the emotion. I feel so lucky that I could have been a part of this project to bring them that emotion, and I hope that there are many more projects like these in the future to help empower the youth of Syria and give them hope for the future.
