Emergency Aid for Children Fleeing Syria

"“We kept asking Syrians what they needed. Education was their first priority. The schools – in tents, anywhere – was what they wanted. You can see cities destroyed, but you can’t have a generation destroyed.” - Maria Assi quoted in Robert Fisk article The 200,000 Syrian child refugees forced into slave labour in Lebanon

With your support, MECA is providing school supplies and shoes for 360 children who fled the violence in Syria with their families and are now being sheltered in Shatila and Nahr El-Bared Refugee Camps in Lebanon. The schools are providing the students with textbooks for free but many families cannot afford the notebooks, pens, and paper as well as math tools like rulers and compasses that their children need to take notes and complete their assignments. MECA is providing the funds to purchase these stationary kits as well as to outfit each child with a new pair of shoes.

Mahmoud from the Child and Youth Center (CYC) explains,  "The most current needs during this period is the protection of the education year for the children. We all have to do our best to help the children to continue to learn." 

Most of these 360 children are taking supplementary remedial education courses at CYC's centers in order to catch up to the level of their age group. CYC mixes education and other activities with the aim of encouraging the children not to drop out of school. It's an uphill battle but these supplies will be another way of providing the children and their families with the encouragement to continue going to school inspite of the many challenges.

Approximately 100 of these children have already dropped out of school but are taking educational courses to learn reading, computers, and other vocational skills. 

MECA also provided clothing to 140 children who are refugees from Syria living in the Baalbeck and Waivel Camp in Lebanon. There are 937 families seeking refuge from the war in Syria in this area, with more arriving every day. MECA staff visited a center in Baalbeck last spring that is providing food, hygiene kits, and psychosocial activities for refugee families with a focus on children. Their first request to MECA was to help them purchase clothing for children.