Girls collect water from a tap in Zaatari camp, Jordan. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

By Matt Herrick, director of media and public relations at Oxfam America.

“Syria, my beloved country, will I ever return to you?” –Reema, a child refugee from Syria

Maybe it’s because my neighbors see the wreckage in Syria as generic flotsam—just some shapeless stuff forced to the surface of their attention, somehow connected to the general instability sweeping parts of the Middle East since the Arab Spring uprisings.

Maybe my friends missed the news about a massacre of children, women and men in the Syrian village of Baniyas a few weeks ago, its images so graphic that most media outlets retreated to banal prose to illustrate yet another terrible chapter in the Syrian conflict.

None of my relatives read The Atlantic magazine’s story of Syrian girls as young as 10 sold into marriage by their families, and called to say, “OK. I understand. How can I help?”

In fact, not many people have called at all.

Today, Los Angeles Times foreign affairs reporter Paul Richter wrote about the flat-lining fundraising around the crisis unfolding in Syria—funds that would otherwise go directly to delivering life-saving aid to refugee families. Now the world’s largest humanitarian disaster, lack of interest from Americans …

… reflects the murky nature of the Syrian war. It also serves as a rough gauge of public sentiment on a crisis that has frustrated the Obama administration for more than two years. … The reasons for the public’s reserved attitude are clear. Syria’s civil war involves multiple armed groups, none of which appears entirely sympathetic in American eyes.

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, in an article titled No one cares about Syria, columnist Terry Glavin tried to drive home the scale of this emergency, and concluded the following:

As a humanitarian crisis, Syria is worse than the Kosovo War of the late 1990s and the Haiti earthquake of 2010 combined.

A few weeks ago, I sat across from Ray Offenheiser, president of my own organization and a man with decades in development and relief work, as he spoke to a Foreign Policy magazine reporter about the scale of need. He dropped two candid thoughts on Cable blogger John Hudson: Syria’s crisis, in terms of scale of need, is one of the largest he’s ever seen; and humanitarian organizations including Oxfam cannot raise money to deliver aid to a growing number of Syrian refugees who need it. These people in need are mostly kids, he said.

Kids.

I have one. He’s 3 years old. He is home with my wife, his mother.

Brutalized, displaced and denied a future, the plight of Syrian children is a non-story, especially in the American media. More than half of all refugees are children. Many of the dead—which the UN today reported number 93,000—are kids or their mothers, those who were unable to flee across the border into neighboring countries to seek refuge. Others may succumb to diarrheal diseases without access to safe, clean water.

Syrians are suffering terribly and they need your help. What’s happening in Syria and surrounding countries is a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions, and Syria’s children are bearing a disproportionate burden in this violent conflict.

Oxfam is working today to protect families who have fled their homes from the risks and indignities of displacement. We are providing access to shelter, food, water, and sanitation – critical aid that is in dangerously short supply.

You, too, can help these children and their families by donating now.

It’s not confusing. It’s not murky. It’s crystal clear: Syrians need our help.

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees. She recently profiled Reema (not her real name), a 12-year-old refugee, in a blog post titled The girl whose face you’ll never see (concerned about her safety should she return to Syria, Reema asked that her face not be photographed). A bright student, Reema spoke candidly about the loss of her school, which was destroyed in the conflict. Below is Beesley’s latest update.

Reema holds the notebook with one of her poems. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

A couple of weeks ago I met Reema. When we left, we gave her with a notebook, pencils, and pens.

At the cash-for-rent distribution I saw her mother, who told me Reema had drawn a picture of me. We went back and found that she had also written two poems. The translations below are “rough” as the poems are written in an Arabic that is likened to Shakespearean English. I hope to go back with a new notebook so I can borrow the one she’s been writing in to photocopy the original Arabic.

Reema is writing more poems. She says she is better at that than drawing. She is happy for us to share her poems and was really pleased that so many people, around the world, knew her through the blog.

Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Here are the rough translations:

Poem 1
Syria
Our hearts love you
How your children love you
How the memory would forget you
We will be back soon, to remove the tears on your cheeks
We will return one day to our mothers to kiss the soil and the flowers
Lovely Syria, we will be back soon.

Poem 2
When I take my pencil and notebook what will I write about?
About my school or my house
I am deprived from living in my house and school
My school, when will I visit you again
To take my bag and run to you
Destruction has replaced you and taken the place of your ringing bells
and without the students

My house, my flowers, I miss you
My Syria, when will I return back to you?

I have dreams that I can’t achieve and make come true
And all I want is living with you in freedom
Syria, my country, I love you.

Reema’s family are among the 50,000 refugees displaced by the crises in Syria who are receiving cash transfers from Oxfam to help pay rent; the transfers are worth $150 per household per month for two months. Up to 150,000 people will also be receiving vouchers for food and hygiene items.

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees.

Shoes belonging to Reema (not her real name), 12, a refugee from Syria living in Lebanon. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Today I met a girl whose face you’ll never see because she’s too scared about what will happen when she returns to Syria.“I don’t want my photograph to be taken because I’m afraid that when we go back something might happen to us.” If I quoted her on everything she said you would say I made it up. She’s 12 going on 25.

She lives on the first floor of a house, in Lebanon, still under construction. There are piles of rubble and concrete all around, no windows, no comfort. She sleeps in a small “room” with her parents and four siblings.

I’d just finished talking with someone else when she came up and started talking to me in a mixture of English and Arabic. The first thing she says is, “I was at school when it was bombed. Some of the children were killed. We all ran away. We left because we were afraid of the bombings in Syria. When we saw the bombing of the school we thought they bombed all schools all over the world.” It feels like one of the saddest things I’ve heard.

“I miss my friends,” she says, “I miss my teachers. I miss my classes, my English classes, my Arabic classes, my music classes. Now I’m just sitting here every day.” Her mother adds, “She gets bored a lot and keeps crying. I don’t let the children out on the street because I don’t want them to have problems with other children and I’m scared they might fall and get hurt. I don’t have money for any medical treatment.”

The girl continues, “‘I don’t have a pencil, no paper, no nothing. I wake up in the morning and I see children going to school and I cry, why don’t I have the right to go to school? And I sit here and I remember our home back in Syria before the fighting.”

Looking around the small area that is now home, she points and says, “We moved sand and stones from here with our own hands so we could try and have some kind normal living here. There are a lot of rats. I’ve seen them. We get sick because of them.”

A year ago her home in Syria was destroyed by the bombing. In the time that followed they moved from place to place. Each time the fighting got worse the family moved on. Eventually they spent three months living underground with no electricity.

The few belongings that Reema’s family managed to take with them after their home in Syria was destroyed by an air strike hang on bare walls inside the partially constructed building that is serving as their home. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

She’s the most articulate 12-year-old I’ve met. I’m told, “She was at a school for bright students and was in the top class.” Without a shadow of a doubt she loved school; repeating again the classes, teachers and friends she loved, and saying how so many children died. “I have no idea what has happened to my friends. I don’t know if they are here in Lebanon or in Syria.” When her school was first bombed, “…it was only a small corner so we continued going to school but then it was bombed again and no one was able to go back.”

We look at the tiny space they have for cooking. She looks at me and apologizes: “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the word in English.” She means kitchen. For the rest of our time together she keeps apologizing. “It’s been a year now since I went to school and I’m forgetting many things. The teachers used to take me to other schools to represent my school. As well as classes I used to teach myself English by reading English books.”

Before leaving she says, “I loved my city. I loved my school. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers.” Her final words are, “Will you come back and visit us?”

Oxfam is providing vulnerable families, including Reema’s, with cash to help them afford safe housing and other essentials. Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Read more about Reema here.

Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Above, girls collect water from a tap stand in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Below, a boy plays on a street where families hang their laundry.

Zaatari is now home to more than 100,000 refugees from the conflict in Syria. According to UNICEF, half of those refugees are children.

With 2,500 to 3,000 Syrians crossing into Jordan each day, Zaatari is now equivalent in size to the fifth-largest city in Jordan. Fifty thousand people arrived in February alone. Oxfam is helping more than 20,000 refugees in the camp by installing water taps and storage towers, latrines, showers, and laundry areas.

Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

“We’re surrounded by children for most of the day. We walk together, we eat together, we share stories and dreams,” said Farah al-Basha, an Oxfam engineer working in Zaatari. “When the time comes to leave the camp … We’re thinking about how lovely a shower will be, but [then] the kids come and say ‘see you tomorrow’ and we close the doors with a big smile. … We start thinking about what can we do next for those kids.”

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Photo: Percy Ramirez/Oxfam America; click to enlarge

Above, Marlith Amasifuen Ishuiza and her son Bryan Sangama at a community water tap in Aviación, a rural town of about 300 people in Peru’s northern Amazon region. With support from Oxfam, women in Aviación worked together to cultivate a traditional garden, which protects their indigenous Kichwa culture while providing an additional source of food and income for their families.

I thought of my 2012 visit to Avación when I read “The Kids Left Behind by the Boom,” a moving op-ed by journalist Marie Arana that appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. With the story of 12-year-old Henrry Ochochoque, Arana touches on many of the same issues that Oxfam’s programs in Peru seek to address: the stark inequalities between the flourishing capital city and the struggling rural villages; the environmental and human costs of out-of-control natural resource extraction; and the still-persistent discrimination that leaves many indigenous people shut out of the country’s recent economic boom.

As Arana points out, these problems affect kids first and foremost. Henrry, and many others like him, are getting “an education that will leave [them] drastically unprepared for the 21st century. … 78 percent of Peru’s indigenous children live in poverty. A third of all rural children suffer chronic malnutrition. … For Henrry, despite his A’s and sunny optimism, the Peruvian boom may as well be on the moon.”

In the face of challenges like this, it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. But for Henrry’s sake, and Bryan’s too, I hope we’ll see some changes before they grow up.

Basic services, like improved water sources, are needed in South Sudan, which will become the world's newest nation on Saturday, July 9. Photo: Caroline Gluck / Oxfam

This Saturday, July 9, South Sudan will become the world’s newest independent nation. Below, Oxfam’s program manager in Sudan, Augustino Buya, offers his perspective on this landmark event.

Augustino Buya was born in 1954, in Terekea in the south of Sudan, two years before independence from Egypt and the UK. In 1984 he became part of a local community self-help organization, which was an Oxfam partner. In 1987 he joined Oxfam, working his way up to program manager, a post he still holds today.

“Saturday for me as an individual is going to be a historic day because I have reached it alive. And also for all southerners it will be historical: whoever has reached that day will be happy,” said Buya.

“What I hope for the future is that there will be no going back to war. That’s what I hope.

Second, that there will be unity of the South Sudanese people to develop their new country. And that there will be good governance for the development of the Republic of South Sudan. With good governance there must be priorities. The priorities must be basic services, such as schools and healthcare, for the common man and woman.

The third priority must be the development of agriculture, to have enough food locally. These things cannot be done without good governance and support from the international community.

…I come from a family which was not educated. I am the only one who had access to education. And when I finished my education I promised to help my family.

Before I had my first child I was helping my brother’s four children. Now I have six of my own: that makes 10. This made me be very careful with my work and be committed.

Three of my brother’s children have graduated with a degree or a diploma, and so have my two eldest. The rest are still in school. I hope the new South Sudan will be an opportunity for them, because there will be a lot of opportunities and chances. That is why I’ll be happy on Saturday, when I reach it alive, because it means that for the rest of my life I know the small ones will get an education and opportunities.”

"I want to rebuild our home... and restart our livelihood," says Raiza, pictured, whose farm was destroyed in Pakistan's recent floods. Photo: Jane Beesley / Oxfam

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in Pakistan, where the devastating floods have now affected 21 million people. Here’s an excerpt from her latest report from the field.

Today I met Raiza, a petite young woman of 22, who’s living in a camp for displaced people at Government High School in Shirkapur district in Sindh province. In conjunction with our local partner group Participatory Development Initiative, Oxfam is providing the 360 families living at the school with cash vouchers for 5,000 rupees (about $58). These vouchers help ensure that people can buy what they need to get by in the camps for at least the next two to three weeks.

“Before the flood I was farming and keeping livestock, and my husband cut people’s hair. Any money I made I gave to my husband and he decided what to spend it on. We didn’t own the land we were living on…we were tenant farmers,” Raiza told me.

“When the flood came we were just sitting in our home. We didn’t know the flood was coming…we just heard the water…we just had to leave our village. The water came very fast. We could only save our children, ourselves and some clothes…we didn’t even have time to save some crockery and other things. We lost everything … our home, livestock.

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Once again I am grateful for Duncan Green’s excellent blog “From Poverty to Power” for raising the issue of global population growth, which generated a lively debate when I blogged about it earlier this year. This time Green references a fascinating lecture by Hans Rosling. You can watch the video below, in which Rosling uses plastic storage boxes from Ikea (Rosling is Swedish so I suppose this makes sense) and an animated PowerPoint presentation to show how helping with basic needs reduces child mortality and encourages people to have fewer children. His basic message: If you want to address population growth, work on eradicating poverty. It’s a clear-eyed analysis of the population issue and basic development, all in about 10 minutes:

Recently, kids living at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince created paintings with reused materials–part of an Oxfam program that teaches kids in Haiti’s camps about health, hygiene, and recycling.

Once an exclusive golf course, the rolling hills of the Petionville Club now house thousands of families displaced by the January earthquake. Three professional artists, two of whom live in the camp, were given the challenge of coming up with ideas for recycling common trash items to make toys. Among their ideas were these paint pots, made from recycled plastic bottles:

Photo: Jane Beesley / Oxfam

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A boy assembles a kite at the Petionville Club, a golf course in Port-au-Prince that now houses thousands of displaced earthquake survivors. Photo: Liz Lucas / Oxfam America

Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues who traveled to Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here’s her latest update, dated February 1.

Tonight’s my last in Port-au-Prince before flying back to Boston. I arrived here about a week after earthquake.  And every day, as I visited the temporary camps where families have slung together shelters of bed sheets or cardboard, the intensity of human need seemed as fierce as the day before–for food, for work, for a decent place to sleep and bathe and go to the bathroom—even as Oxfam is building latrines and setting up water sources as fast as possible.

The hardship people are enduring is profound. I won’t forget it.

But there’s something else I won’t forget either: the ingenuity of the kids and their ability to set aside their worries, even if it’s for only a few minutes, and find the salve that sooths magically: play.

Today, I saw the best thing yet. It was at the crowded Centre Sportif de Carrefour, a sports complex where more than 2,000 people are camped on concrete and hard-packed earth. Weaving between the tents made of tarps from China were small boys—first one, then another, and another. All of them were pulling cars on strings. On closer examination, I realized the cars were small plastic juice jugs, outfitted with axels made from lollipop sticks, and wheels made from the red caps of other juice bottles. For ballast, the boys had loaded their cars with stones. Strips of plastic, tied together, served as strings for towing them.

They were ingenious.

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