Syria: You are Bringing Food, Medicine, and Home Repairs

Last December families poured out of Aleppo and joined thousands already on the move throughout Syria, traveling to escape fighting. These families in transit had no way to cook meals and were surviving on packaged food. You saw this crisis and started feeding them.

For months now, your generosity has funded large kitchens that cook a nourishing meal and distribute it to families each weekday. Last month alone, you provided 500,000 meals! The kitchen serves foods like rice, bulgur, potatoes, white beans, salad, and pasta.

Once the huge pots of food are ready, staff loads them on trucks and drives to various points outside the city. Families know the routine and line up with buckets and pots to carry the meals back home.

What’s more, the kitchens are staffed by over 150 displaced people who now have work and income, thanks to you.

These hot meals bring great security to families who have left their homes. Thank you for your generosity!

Here are some other ways you showed up for war-torn cities in Syria in the last two months…

Ambulances on the Frontlines

Fighting has been intense in the city of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria. More than 200,000 people were living under siege there for the past three years, caught in a brutal war involving ISIS, rebel groups, and Syrian government forces.

The siege has finally been broken, but the health care system is in shambles. You responded by sending mobile medical clinics into the city, risking dangerous roads to reach thousands of people. Each clinic is equipped to bring emergency care, provide medicine, and even perform some surgeries.

These are the same units you sent to Aleppo earlier this year. Now that the frontlines have shifted, these four mobile units moved too and are serving the people of Deir ez-Zor.

Rebuilding Damaged Homes 

In 2013, the city of Aleppo was in the middle of five years of heavy fighting. Mohammad and his wife Maryam were living here with three young children when Mohammad’s eye was injured in the violence. They feared that if they stayed any longer, they would die. This began their saga of searching for safety. The first location they tried was secure for about a month. The next place lasted half a year. Finally they found a home for two years but had no water or electricity. 

What a relief it was for them when it was finally safe enough to return to Aleppo. But they found a shell of a house where their home used to be. Glass smashed out of windows. Doors torn off hinges. Water taps stripped out of the wall. Light fixtures gone from the ceiling. 

Mohammad and Maryam are just one of many families facing this situation, and you are bringing help. Your love is buying supplies and paying workers to repair homes all over their neighborhood.

So far, 18 houses have been repaired and another 39 are underway. Our goal is to make each home secure and provide at least one livable room, a bathroom, and a kitchen so that families can tackle the longer work of rebuilding the rest of the house.

But that is not all. These houses still do not have electricity, and you purchased four large generators that will serve the whole community. They are in place and will be hooked up soon. Residents were giddy with excitement when these were delivered. Can you imagine going YEARS without electricity? These families won’t have to for much longer.

No electricity means no refrigerated food, no air conditioning in the sweltering summer temperatures, and no lights at night. But now you provided four generators for the neighborhood. People’s faces lit up with joy!

Thank you for letting the people of Syria know they are not forgotten. Your love is making a difference in thousands of people’s lives.