Child Refugee Crisis

Thank you so much for your generous contribution to Save the Children's Child Refugee Crisis fund! Here is an example of children we are able to support because of donors like you:

Sami* and Salim* are 1 year 3 month old twin boys, suffering from acute severe malnutrition and living in a displacement camp in North East Syria with their mother Shayma*, 21.  

Sami and Salim’s family have been living in the camp since conflict forced them to leave their home six years ago. Sami and Salim were born in the camp and as the family could not afford extra food other than the monthly food rations provided to them, the twins became malnourished.

When the twins were three months old, Shayma started having trouble breastfeeding them both. She thought her milk was not enough because she did not eat properly herself, so she started feeding them dates, but they immediately fell ill. They started to lose weight and become frail, so Shayma started taking them to the health clinics for treatment.

One day when Shayma was coming back home from the health center, a woman saw her and advised her to visit Save the Children’s Mother-Baby Area, where she discovered that Sami and Salim had acute severe malnutrition. The twins were immediately referred to a treatment center. Simultaneously, Shayma was supported with Infant and Young Children Feeding (IYCF) sessions to correct some of the beliefs she had about breastfeeding.

Shayma was also added to the Fresh Food Voucher Program. She joins over 1,400 other lactating mothers with children under 2 in her camp who are benefiting from the program, which aims at improving the dietary diversity of lactating mothers and their children. The program started as a pilot project in a camp in North East Syria and was expanded throughout 2021 to three other camps reaching a total of around 3,500 mothers.  

Shayma says that the fresh food was what made the difference and helped Sami and Salim get better and be healthy. She said that Save the Children had ‘’literally’’ saved her children’s lives.

Links:

• Save the Children's work in Syria

2.4 million Syrian children are currently out of school. Save the Children supports over 90 education facilities including schools, to make sure that all children can continue to learn. Basma*, 11, is one of the children helped by your generosity. 

Despite being a diligent student and a passionate learner, Basma was forced to leave school because of the conflict in Syria. When she was in the second grade, Basma witnessed a bombardment during a school day. After that she spent the remainder of the school year in a makeshift school in a basement.

The following year was particularly hard for the family. In the space of 12 months Basma lost her father, her best friend, and her favorite teacher and her brother and sister were left with permanent disabilities from their injuries. The family was forced to leave their home and seek refuge in a displacement camp in North East Syria. This ended Basma’s education while she was only in the third grade.

After two years of disruption from her education, Basma was enrolled in Save the Children’s school at the camp. Basma dreams of becoming a doctor one day to honor her father and help fund the treatment of her sick mother.

Basma's mother, Fatma*, has this to say about Save the Children's assistance: "When I see them coming back from school, I almost tear up. It feels like the old days. They keep telling me what they learned. I follow up on their education. Life in the camp is by no means normal and that is why having schools is very important. Had it not been for school, the children would have been stuck in a vicious cycle. Save the Children school made that old dream possible again."

(*All names have been changed to protect identities.)

Links:

• Save the Children - Syria
• Save the Children - Education

Four years after the massive exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh, amid a global pandemic, nearly one million people remain stranded in Cox's Bazar, the largest refugee camp in the world. 

With your help, Save the Children has been providing essential services to nearly 600,000 Rohingya refugees and the local community since 2017. Our 1,715 staff and volunteers continue with life-saving work in camps and host communities, thanks in part to your generosity. Here are summaries of work they have performed in recent months.

Responding to COVID-19

Cox’s Bazar is one of the hot spots in Bangladesh for COVID-19 transmission because of the high population density in camps and the challenges of maintaining social distancing. We and other organizations are better prepared to respond to COVID-19 than in 2020, given our investment in widespread community health prevention strategies as well as specialized health facilities to identify, isolate and treat patients with COVID-19.

Health Care

We remain a leading healthcare provider in camps, running 8 health posts and a 24/7 primary care facility in addition to our COVID-19 Isolation and Treatment center. Facilities serve refugees and people in host communities. At all facilities, we also offer mental health and psychological support to help refugees who experienced the trauma of fleeing Myanmar and are faced with the stress of living a day-to-day existence in camps, and to people from host communities.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Clean water and hygiene keep children and families healthy and reduce the risk of COVID-19 and other communicable diseases. Our teams continuously repair and maintain a large network of latrines, bathing stations, water wells and water supply systems. This includes the very necessary but unenviable work of “de-sludging” latrine pits so they can continue to be used. New facilities are constructed as needed.

Education

Now that the government has announced all schools in Bangladesh can reopen, we are reopening our temporary learning centers in camps in a phased manner across school grades.

Child Protection

While the pandemic forced the suspension of some of our protection work, social workers and volunteers support and follow up on especially vulnerable children in camps and host communities. We provide psychological support through home-based visits rather than having groups of children attend our child-friendly spaces.

Food and Nutrition

Each month, we provide food commodities and fresh vegetables; we also distribute cash vouchers so families can choose for themselves which foods they purchase. Providing cash vouchers is more efficient than food distributions, and supports markets in camps and the livelihoods of those who run them. Our nutrition services – screenings for malnutrition, a supplemental feeding program and individual counselling on infant and young child feeding for pregnant women and nursing mothers – continued with limited staff due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Your support of the Child Refugee Crisis Fund helps make our lifeline of support possible. Thank you again for standing by us and by the side of children and their families.

*All names have been changed for privacy and protection reasons

Dana*, 12, is originally from Dair Ezzor in Syria. Her family of ten have been living in Al Hol displacement camp for three years. Dana only managed to complete the first year of her schooling before her family were forced to flee their home. Since then, Save the Children’s Temporary Learning Space in the camp has been Dana’s main source of education. She has been a student at the Temporary Learning Space for the three years her family have been in Al Hol. It has made a huge difference to Dana’s life and the life of her family.

In the words of Dana’s mother, “I was hoping that my children can have the opportunity to study here [Al Hol camp]. They didn’t before. The schools were getting bombed. So there was no education. Now, I have five children attending Save the Children school here”.

Save the Children currently operates eight Temporary Learning Spaces in three camps in North East Syria. Temporary Learning Spaces provide access to quality non-formal education opportunities for children aged six to 17, many of whom have faced multiple displacements and have been out of school for a prolonged period of time. Indeed, many children have never been to school at all. Temporary Learning Spaces offer two education tracks to meet the learning needs of each child:

1) Basic Literacy and Numeracy for children aged nine and above who have not yet acquired these foundational skills.

2) The Self Learning Program - a curriculum designed for children to achieve competencies in line with the formal school system.

Each Temporary Learning Space supports 400-600 children. These children are also supported through recreational psychosocial support activities.

Aya, 10 years old, has been displaced for three months. Her family was forced to flee in the middle of the night because their neighborhood was hit by shelling. 

To stop the conflict robbing children of their education, Save the Children and its partner Shafak have turned four buses into brightly painted mobile classrooms. The aid agencies take school to some of the 575,000 displaced children at the heart of the crisis.

The mobile classrooms teach core subjects such as Arabic and math, as well as providing structured emotional and psychosocial support along with games to help children recover from the traumatic experiences they have been through. Each supports around 80 children at a time.

Aya says that she's not scared in the bus, and that her favorite subject is Arabic. She hopes to become a doctor so she can help the Syrian population.

Due to COVID-19 rules, the busses have moved to a distance learning model. Teachers film themselves giving lessons in the bus and send them to their students via Whatsapp. They also provide educational activities, hold discussions and set homework and classes are delivered to the same students who were enrolled before the suspension of schools.

Thanks to the support of people like you, Save the Children is able to continue reaching the most marginalized children. Thank you for your support!