Syrian Refugee Crisis

COUNTRY UPDATES

SYRIA

World Vision and our local partners are reaching an average of 400,000 displaced people per month in Northwest Syria with WASH assistance. We provide emergency water, rehabilitate water and sewage facilities, collect solid waste, and maintain water pumping stations.

In education, World Vision and local partners helped 94,704 children and teachers in Northwest Syria in FY21 through our remedial and catch-up program, psychosocial support, back-to-learning campaign, and learning supplies distribution. We also raised their awareness about risks to child protection, including early marriage, child labor, and domestic violence.

Our team launched a multifaceted response to help mitigate and prevent the spread of COVID-19, including reorganizing operations at our health facilities to minimize infection and establishing isolation units in communities. We provided personal protective equipment to frontline workers and the general population, conducted trainings on infection control, mobilized the community, and raised awareness about hygiene, social distancing, mask wearing, and vaccination.

World Vision’s response also featured WASH UP!, a behavior-change program that teaches children not only how to practice healthy hygiene, but also empowers them to encourage their friends, families, and communities to do the same. We adapted WASH UP! to support the socio-emotional needs of Syrian refugee children, many of whom have experienced significant trauma.

LEBANON

Lebanon continued to endure multiple crises in FY21. The country dealt not only with Syrian refugees, COVID-19, and massive economic collapse, but also the lingering aftermath of the Beirut blast in August 2020. People face both drastic increases in prices and dire shortages of food, medicine, and fuel. To respond more directly to urgent needs, World Vision has created a separate Lebanon crisis response. Reporting for that response will start in FY22.

In FY21, we worked with partners to support nearly 484,000 Syrian refugees within Lebanon with food security, child protection, WASH, and education.

To help meet basic needs, World Vision provided multipurpose cash grants to 29,215 of the most vulnerable refugees in the Bekaa Valley. Their ability to earn income diminishes in the winter because of lack of agricultural or construction work. Without support, they cannot afford the warm clothes, blankets, and fuel needed to live in an area with frequent snowfall and subzero temperatures.

We reached 3,158 children with basic education and psychosocial support, conducted remotely because of COVID-19 concerns. This included early childhood education and teaching in Arabic, other foreign languages, and math, along with mental health activities.

JORDAN

In FY21, World Vision reached 16,882 refugee children, youth, and caregivers in Jordan through our programs in early childhood, school feeding, youth empowerment, alternative education, and remedial education. We taught new and less qualified teachers to build basic competencies in remedial and catch-up education programs, and created a practical handbook with best practices.

We rehabilitated WASH facilities in schools, in part to help promote retention of children most at risk. In the past year, we targeted nine schools in the northern governates of Jordan by installing wastewater treatment systems to reduce environmental hazards and introducing best environmental and health practices for children and teachers. We also facilitated WASH UP! to promote proper hygiene for children and raise their awareness of water conservation.

TURKEY

World Vision supported a livelihoods project in Turkey in FY21, training aspiring entrepreneurs to plan and successfully operate a small business. Trainees submitted their business proposals for evaluation by a committee of experienced businesspeople.

The committee provided 60 trainees—70% Syrian refugees and 30% Turkish citizens—with in-kind grants of $3,800 apiece to help them start and register small businesses, such as sewing. Those chosen had developed proposals with the greatest potential to lead to profitable microenterprises.

Life as a refugee in the Syria region can be overwhelming. Your generous support enables World Vision to help meet basic needs, improve bleak conditions, and reflect the love of God. Thank you for joining us in our work to transform lives and bring hope to vulnerable children and their families.

• Emergency_Response_Syria_Refugee_Response_Report_FY21_Annual.pdf (PDF)
  

The World Vision Syria Response, based out of Amman, covers programmes in Syria, Jordan and Turkey. We also have national offices in Lebanon and Iraq, responding to both domestic development/humanitarian needs and the Syrian refugee crisis.

 Since 2011, the Syria Response has been at the leading edge of World Vision’s work in fragile contexts, delivering innovative and evidence-based programming across three diverse countries.

 Directly and through partners, we support protection, health, education, livelihoods, water & sanitation, and food security projects to vulnerable families. Our approach focuses on the holistic needs of the child, embedded within their community structures.

Reaching the most vulnerable

During our fiscal year 2020 (Oct 1, 2019 -Sep 30, 2020), World Vision Syria Response reached a total of 2,065,800 conflict-affected adults and children across Turkey (1% of total reach), Jordan (5% of total reach) and Syria (94% of total reach). 

• Almost two-thirds of people (63%) benefitted from water, sanitation and hygiene services
• 14% of vulnerable families benefitted from World Vision supported health services
• 8% from shelter services for displaced families
• 6% from protection services, including psychosocial and case management support for children
• 6% from education
• 3% from cash and livelihoods interventions

 83% of World Vision’s beneficiaries during this period were women (26%) and children (57%)

 For full details on our impact, please see the attached FY20 annual report. Below are brief overviews of our interventions.

 Agility and adaptability during COVID-19 health crisis

The rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 has severely affected health and economic systems in many countries. With the overarching goal to limit the spread of COVID-19 and reduce its impact on vulnerable children and families in Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, World Vision Syria Response has developed a holistic programme framework to respond to the emerging needs in all three country contexts. Since March 2020, the approach has been threefold:

• scaling up preventive measures to limit the spread of disease;
• strengthening health systems and capacity of workers;
• supporting children impacted by COVID-19 through education, child protection, food and livelihoods

 World Vision Syria Response and partners responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a multifaceted program that simultaneously tackled prevention of the spread, as well as mitigation of the impact of the pandemic by supporting COVID-19 isolation and treatment centres with intensive care unit (ICU) capacity, community mobilisation and awareness-raising activities on COVID-19 related topics, such as, hygiene promotion, social distancing, wearing of masks and vaccinations. The team has also increased the capacity of health staff by conducting COVID-19 related trainings, which include infection prevention and control, and reorganising the routine of operations in health facilities to minimise risk of infections trainings; while ensuring the continued provision of routine health services to people in need. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a rapid response team was deployed in NWS that included integrated health and protection services, and support for basic water and sanitation services and distribution of hygiene kits and masks were continued.

 Despite the challenges faced during the COVID-19 global health crisis, World Vision Syria Response’s water, sanitation and hygiene activities were expanded through our local partners (International Humanitarian Relief Association IYD) and War Child, in NWS. At its heart Wash Up! is a behaviour change programme that not only teaches children how to avoid bacteria and keep clean and healthy, it also empowers children to bring healthy hygiene habits to their friends, families and communities—they become change agents. For the Syria Response context, the WaSH UP! program has been adapted to support the socio-emotional needs of Syrian refugee children, many of whom have experienced significant trauma.

Child protection programmes strive to protect those who are experiencing or are at risk of violence through contextualised and piloted interventions and improved capacity of service providers through direct trainings and workshops addressing skills and knowledge needed to respond to violence against children in all its forms. In addition, child survivors of abuse, exploitation or violence are supported through appropriate community-based care systems; which are framed within the safe spaces for children and women, community committees, service mapping and referral processes; after which they are reintegrated into their families, when possible and appropriate and that is achieved while we work with schools, communities and camps management.

Believing that families with secure, productive and resilient livelihoods can protect, educate, care for, and nurture their children from infancy to adulthood, World Vision’s livelihood interventions under the Syria Response aim at improving household level livelihoods through empowering extremely vulnerable individuals with the skills, knowledge and financial means to meet the basic and development needs of their children and families. Using skills training, small enterprise development, and cash and voucher programming, World Vision Syria Response’s livelihood programmes prioritise the following:

• children’s needs;
• in-country humanitarian needs;
• the mitigation measures against the consequences of the COVID-19 health crisis, and of climate change;
• any opportunity to conduct research and advocacy associated with the livelihood sector.

 Another sector that World Vision Syria Response prioritises is education, implementing programmes with local implementing partners for the most vulnerable out-of-school children (catch-up programme) and those who are at risk of dropping out of school (remedial programme)11. To this end, World Vision Syria Response has provided 3,229 Syrian refygee girls and boys in Azraq Camp with early childhood education and development activities, including parental training and engagement. Additionally, children and youth in Jordan are also empowered through remedial education in public schools in Jordan to ensure they are supported and retained in schools.

Links:

• Syria Response Annual Report 2020