Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

Thanks to the generous support of donors to make our ability to provide life-saving disaster health care services to Syrian refugee children and their families possible, our healing and recovery work has continued to make a difference in healing and improving the lives of many of these victims of the Syrian civil war.

To ensure this now long term need for healing and recovery is sustained, we have also continued to make steady progress in preparing a growing pool of local psychosocial service providers to maintain this healing work in the future through our free professional skills training program provided to medical students in partnership with the Jordanian medical schools.

Our psychosocial services include but are not limited to:
individual and family trauma treatment, expressive arts therapy, play therapy, milieu therapy, support groups, stress and mood management skills training, conflict management skills training, and crisis oriented parenting skills.
Our pandemic health care services include:
health guidance, monitoring, and education on prevention and mitigation of COVID infection, and where possible medical equipment and medications for alleviating symptoms.

Particular programs and activities include:

• Operating residential services at an apartment building we support that houses more than 40 families made up of refugee widows and their children.
• Operating and expanding on establishing Women’s Safe Space sites for women and young girls
• Establishing and supporting the development of elementary schools for refugee children into trauma-informed schools that address both academic and mental health needs of traumatized children.
• Establishing virtual health care stations at sites where there are concentrations of refugees to make it possible for receiving tele-health care services for both psychosocial and pandemic related needs.
• Providing pandemic related self-monitoring and preventative health care equipment, supplies, medications, respiratory equipment, guidance, and education.
• Operating certified professional psychosocial skills training programs to local health care service providers as well as humanitarian aid workers to build growing and permanent local capacity for taking on and maintaining these services into the future.

As we have been responding to the critical needs of Syrian refugees since 2011, which are now significantly compounded by the COVID 19 pandemic and exposure to unrelenting extreme weather conditions placing this community at even greater risk of life and death, these needs are only growing. Given limited resources that are not keeping up and even declining, maintaining our work is also becoming significantly more challenging.

11 years of languishing in what is becoming a chronic state of day-to-day crisis, war trauma, profound loss due to being uprooted from everything they’ve had and known in daily life, pandemic risk, and extreme climate exposure continue to take an increasingly devastating toll on the lives, well-being, and futures of hundreds of thousands of refugee children and their families in Jordan. At the same time the plight of Syrian refugees has unfortunately been fading from public eye and attention as time and other world events capture the global spotlight. Unfortunately, also declining has been the critically needed financial resources required for us to carry on this completely free service by our volunteer team of expert mental health therapists and local trainees.

Our ability to keep providing these free disaster health care program services in response to this ongoing and overwhelming humanitarian tragedy relies directly on the financial support of those who are drawn to supporting our efforts during this crisis by helping to cover the required direct out-of-pocket costs of doing so
We continue to appeal for the critical financial support of those who can donate the power of their money to the direct costs of our getting these services to those in such desperate need, and in time.

HOW YOU CAN HELP US MEET THESE NEW CHALLENGES AND MAINTAIN OUR LIFE-SAVING ASSISTANCE:

• Continue supporting our work with your generous contributions. Every donation amount results in our reaching more children and families to achieve more healing and recovery.
• Share our story with family, friends, and colleagues to encourage their support by raising awareness of both the need and the concrete good being done.
• Link our appeal site to your social media sites and ask others to do the same.
• Learn if your employment offers matching donations for humanitarian causes to multiply our contributions.

Feel free to contact us with any questions or to share your feedback at: SOlweean@aol.com

Links:

• Program Details at our nonprofit partner site: Common Bond Inst.