Ghouta Update: Meet the Families You’re Helping

If you’ve been following international news over the last few weeks, you know that things in Syria are bad. What you might not know is that following the story puts you in the minority.

As the violence in Syria increases, particularly in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, most are tuning out. The war in Syria has gone on too long. Whole regions of people have been displaced. The images are too gruesome, the stories too sad.

But you keep showing up.

You have the courage to continue pressing in when others are turning away. For you, the grind of terror isn’t numbing—it’s galvanizing. You continue to choose to stand with Syrians fleeing for their very lives.

If you donated toward emergency relief for those forced to flee eastern Ghouta last week, the money you gave is already supporting a medical team and mobile clinic that has already treated more than 10,000 displaced people. They are working around the clock to care for those in dire need.

And if you haven’t donated yet, we are increasing our response to provide urgent medical care for another 60,000 people and emergency nutrition for 10,000 children. We need your help.

I want to introduce you to some of the children and families you’ve already helped with urgent medical care…

Waeed is 5 years old.

Our team member Michel referred to her as “a daughter of the war.” Waeed was born in a time of violence in Syria, and has known nothing else.

When Waeed, her mom, and her four sisters fled their home in Ghouta, they had to leave her father behind. His leg was injured in the war, and he simply couldn’t make the difficult trip.

Waeed is getting care for the wound she got on her head as they fled, but it’s hard not knowing what is happening to her dad.

Hamze, in the orange t-shirt above, is two years old.

Hamze’s mom died in the war when he was 6 months old. No one knows what happened to his father. He lives with his aunt Amal and his cousin now.

Amal is a bright, skilled woman who taught high school math and computer science. Even so, she wasn’t equipped to raise two children alone during a siege.

“There was fear and tragedy,” she says “whomever was in control. We had to live like the primitive human being, except we had no fresh water [to drink] nor animals to hunt and eat.”

Mohamad visited our clinic with his family to have shrapnel removed from his leg and the wound cleaned and stitched up. A 10 year-old’s leg is no match for an exploding bomb.

Abdallah, he needed shrapnel removed from his leg too.

He was outside when a missile dropped nearby, and the missile worked just as it was designed to—it sent pieces of metal through Abdallah’s body.

Abdallah is 9 years old, in second grade, and he has no dreams about what he wants to become someday. Long before war took his home, it stole his ability to imagine a future for himself.

All he knows are the utterly practical skills that every kid learns in a war zone: run away from missiles and strange men.

Msallem, at 82 years old, hasn’t been a kid for a long time (though in candid moments, he showed himself to be young at heart).

Unlike the children who received treatment at the clinic, Msallem remembers a time before war, a time before he lost his own two sons to violence.

Msallem was treated at the clinic the day before this photo was taken for an injury to his arm. The medical team you’re supporting was able to restore movement to his fingers. He came back to the clinic the next day just to say thank you.

He came back to thank you.

The crisis in eastern Ghouta is far from over. Thousands of terrified families are searching for help after years of being cut off from the basics needed to live.

We are committed to reaching more families as they are forced to flee—to providing urgent medical care, lifesaving nutrition, and other essentials. You are making that possible.

We need your courage now. Please keep pressing in. Please continue to give.