“I wish you could provide us with heating fuel. I plead to the world and all humanitarian organizations to answer our calls.”
“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,” are the heartbreaking words of a refugee written by Warsan Shire, a poet who has gathered the collective refugee experience through her own family. As her own family can attest when they fled Somalia, refugees only leave home when home becomes too dangerous to live in anymore. Unfortunately, this is now the experience of countless Syrians.
The Syrian refugee crisis doesn’t have an end in sight
Syrian refugees in Turkey gather around a truck, from which they will receive winter jackets, gloves, socks, blankets and more in a Zakat Foundation of America distribution. | Zakat Foundation of America photo
How can children learn when their basic needs aren’t being met?
A majority of Syrian refugees live in refugee camps made of paper-thin tents. These tents offer little to no protection from the sun’s harsh natural elements in the summer or the cold in the winter. In the winter, children in refugee camps have to walk in freezing mud with no shoes.
If they are lucky, they have ill-fitted sandals that do not protect them from frostbite. They brave the cold to pick through piles of garbage to carry back to their tents to burn.
In Lebanon, our team took the time to talk to Lynn, a Syrian refugee child, about what she truly needed. Here is what she had to say:
The goal is to ensure every child in the camps of Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey can stay safely warm for the winter. You can help.
For just $150, you can warm an entire refugee family all winter. Can you imagine warming little toes and fingers? The hope you can bring to a family just by giving them fuel for the winter? Imagine a child being spared from having to walk in freezing conditions to find garbage to burn to stay warm.
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Minara El-Rahman is a Digital Marketing professional from the San Francisco Bay Area with a passion for inspiring our younger generation about Islam. She launched her blog, "Hijabi Life," as a Muslim lifestyle blog to help Muslims find tips and ideas about food, marriage, parenthood, and fashion in 2011. She has worked in a myriad of companies with a focus on Muslim organizations such as Zaytuna College and Zakat Foundation of America.