Syrian child refugees: creating a better future through education

War forced millions of Syrians to flee their homes. Hundreds of thousands of them are living below the extreme poverty line in neighboring Lebanon. Many of the refugees are children with no future prospects in the Lebanese refugee camps.

Your donation makes a difference! With your support, we enable Syrian boys and girls to attend a special-needs school. This gives refugee children the chance for a better future through education. Traumatized children receive psychological help from a psychologist to heal their emotional wounds so that they can better cope with school life.

For over twelve years, now, a devastating war has been raging in Syria. Many Syrian children have grown up with this violence, with the constant threat to their lives. They know nothing else except war and displacement.

Their war experiences and traumas are being reactivated by the current turbulent political situation in Lebanon: Since October, Israel and the Hezbollah militia have been fighting on Lebanon’s southern border, leading to the displacement of 55,000 Lebanese and Syrian refugees from Southern Lebanon to others parts of the country. Some of them have fled to our project area in the east.

Seeing the pictures of war and witnessing the arrival of new refugees, the Syrian children in Ghazzé are terrified of an expansion of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Many are scared that Hezbollah might somehow manoeuvre Lebanon into a war with Israel.

For most Syrian children in Lebanon, the stressful, bleak life as a refugee is the only life they know. Most families are dependent on social benefits, living in cramped housing. High inflation is currently causing refugees, already living in abject poverty, to become even more impoverished. Many Syrian families in the camps either struggle or are no longer able to feed their children let alone pay school fees. As a consequence, more than half of all Syrian school age girls and boys do not go to school.

Hundreds of thousands of children are affected. At the same time, the lack of educational opportunities leaves them with no future prospects. As well as the school fees, which families often cannot afford, Lebanese state schools have strict requirements for Syrian children, who have to pass an entrance exam before admission is granted.

One further obstacle is the use of English in Lebanese lessons. Most Syrian children cannot speak English and also often require psychological support before they can cope with regular school life in Lebanon.

The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where most Syrian refugees live in refugee camps, is also home to the Damme special-needs school. The school (Damme = “hug” in English) gives children the chance to live a life free of poverty. Through our comprehensive financing of this special-needs school, we are providing significant support to the project run by our partner, ALPHA.

Our project is currently supporting 400 Syrian children between the ages of three and sixteen. The boys and girls receive language courses and special tuition in all subjects to help them integrate into a Lebanese state school and create a future for themselves in Lebanon free of poverty. A psychologist is on hand to provide urgently needed psychological help to traumatised children. We are also distributing food parcels to the families of children enrolled at the special-needs school.

For the children, the school is a place not only of refuge but also of hope. Here they can play and, for a short time, forget the everyday struggles in the refugee camps.