Give Syrian Children Hope for The Future

Thanks to the generous donors of the Global Giving community, the Danish Refugee Council can continue to offer refugee children and children from the vulnerable host communities in the neighboring country Jordan a safe, caring space in which they can play, learn, interact and process their past and present experiences with the help from our competent staff.
In this way, vulnerable children are provided a space in which they can get a needed break from the situation they are currently in.
Your donations have contributed to ensuring that the important child-focused work of the Al Nuzha SANAD Community Center in Amman can continue, so that all the children who visit and use the Community Center can continue to benefit from its activities.

Al Nuzha SANAD Community Center, which is run by the Danish Refugee Council in Jordan, is always filled with activity. In the Child Friendly Space in the Community Center, the DRC runs structured psychosocial activities for refugee and Jordanian children. Various techniques are utilized to engage children according to their needs, interests, abilities and skills.

Some of the activities in SANAD’s Child Friendly Space can include:
• Creating a personal story book in which children depict themselves and their lives through pictures
• Photographs, writing and storytelling
• Team games, such as an “Escape the Room” activity organized in which children work collaboratively to solve several puzzles and riddles that must be overcome in order to achieve victory
• Zumba and dance classes
• General play through toys and resources in the CFS
• Integration of drama and role play

Furthermore, the Child Friendly Space conducts conflict management and communication sessions for children, to teach and train the children in communicating their thoughts and feelings and to sensitize them to the thoughts and feelings of others. Behavioral reactions such as frustration and aggression are common amongst refugee children as well as vulnerable children within the host community, who have seen their daily lives change drastically the last years. The trauma and challenges the children experience, can become a source of conflicts among the children. For this reason, the staff at Nuzha Community Center teach the children how to understand the signals and expressions of others and to express themselves in a friendly and clear manner. This approach has proven to be very beneficial – and in the Nuzha Community Center, new friendships among the children are established every day.

Jamila and her son Hussein

The Al Nuzha SANAD Community Center has already had a vital, positive impact on the lives of many.

Hussein and Jamila are one of those heartwarming stories: “My children have looked death in the eye at an age much too young. They saw the children next-door being blasted to pieces. And they have experienced extreme fear, when we fled from the bombs towards the Jordanian border for 5 days on end. Especially my oldest son, Hussein aged 11, has been profoundly affected by the experiences and the fear. In the beginning in Jordan, he would barely speak, and never to a stranger – he closed himself off. But then I started to take him to the Community Center of the Danish Refugee Council. Here, he was able to play with peers, and speak to staff that cared for him. He has always been interested in IT and he dreams about working with computers. So he was thrilled, when he realized that the Community Center enabled him to write, work and play on a computer.

A hope for the future was once again ignited in him. The Community Center became his safe haven and his hope. Now, he speaks to other children and adults, and his hope is, that the Community Center can help him gain competences for a future job” says Jamila, who is the mother of five children. Jamila fled heavily pregnant with her husband and 4 children from Aleppo to Jordan.

Focus on durable solutions

Many of the Syrian refugees, who make use of the Community Center, have been forced to flee their homes in Syria because of the conflict.

They now call the Azraq Camp their temporary home. More than 53.000 other Syrians live in the tented city in the desert. There is no reason to believe, that the Syrian refugees will be able to return home in the nearest future.

For this reason, the Danish Refugee Council has a great focus on durable solutions which go beyond emergency relief and the provision of the most basic necessities for survival; the Danish Refugee Council strives to ensure the healthiest possible development of refugee children, to increase their chances of thriving in the future. Furthermore, through livelihood training and referral services, the community centers operated by DRC aim to provide refugees with the opportunity to become self-reliant.