Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’
Eugene Cho: Video Update from the Middle East
Pastor, author and friend of World Relief Eugene Cho is currently in the Middle East, along with teams from One Day’s Wages and World Relief. The teams are visiting local leaders who are actively involved in welcoming Syrian refugees, helping the displaced resettle and begin to build new lives.
Watch Eugene Cho’s update from the Middle East, recorded a few days ago.
World Relief is honored and grateful that One Day’s Wages is partnering with us to provide education for Syrian refugee children and support schools teaching a Syrian curriculum so kids can continue in their education where they left off.
Learn more about One Day’s Wages, and stay tuned in the coming weeks for more information about how you can get involved.
6 Ways You Can Help Syrian Refugees Today
Youâve read the statistics. Youâve seen the images. And youâve heard the stories of the Syrian refugee crisis. But you havenât known what you can do to help.
You are not alone.
March 16, 2018 marked the seven year anniversary of the initial conflict in Syria that has led to a refugee crisis of historic proportions. The numbers are staggeringâhalf of the population of Syria has fled the country, and 5.6 million people now live as refugees in neighboring countries. Yet recent research shows that individuals and churches are struggling to engage the crisis in a meaningful way.
While the reasons for this lack of engagement vary, one reason is that many people simply donât know how to engage. A problem as complex as the Syrian refugee crisis can be hard to get your head around, let alone know what you can do about it.
Because of this, we at World Relief have tried to provide specific, straight-forward opportunities for each of us to help meet the immediate and long term needs of our Syrian friends and other refugees in the Middle East.
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Help refugees rebuild their lives in the U.S. Join the campaign today.
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Make a one-time donation to our work with refugees in the Middle East and here in the United States. Our partner churches and organizations are already in place, distributing welcome kits to newly displaced refugees, creating child friendly spaces for children displaced by conflict, providing psychosocial counseling to traumatized women and helping refugees arriving to the U.S. become independent and integrated in their new country.
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Watch and listen to four leaders share their unique perspectives about making a difference in the lives of refugees in the U.S. and around the world.
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Volunteer at a World Relief U.S. office. Help us meet the needs of refugees by providing compassionate and holistic care from the moment they arrive at the airport through their journey to self-sufficiency.
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Continue to learn more about the crisis. This list of resources provided by We Welcome Refugees is a great place to start.
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Pray. Download a prayer guide that guides you through a week of daily prayers for refugees.
No single one of us can solve a problem as vast as the Syrian refugee crisis. But every single one of us can do something. Today, may each of us choose to engageâto provide help where help is neededâin some meaningful way.
Finding Hope on the Front Lines, Part 2
Editors Note: What follows is an excerpt from another update received from Maggie Konstanski, World Relief’s Disaster Response Manager. (Read Maggie’s first update.) Maggie writes from Iraq, where she is currently working with local leaders to assist families forced from their homes because of the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
This week, my heart has been broken 10 times over. As I learn more about the stories and challenges of people I care for deeply, as statistics are transformed into stories of people I have come to love, I feel frustrated that I cannot do more to help. During a training exercise, we were sharing about what strengths existed within their communities and how those strengths were helping the community. Each one shared stories of how the community had surrounded each other, supported one another and sacrificed for each other. They had come from different towns, different backgrounds, and all faced their own share of hardship. They could have retreated within and only looked out for their own interests, and no one would fault them for it.
Instead, as every person in the room shared their own story of displacement, there was one phrase weaved as a common thread in each story: â…and then I said, âhow can I help?ââ
In circumstances that would lead many of us to ask, âHow can someone help me?â this was a group that courageously asked the opposite, responding to the needs that surrounded them using whatever capacities and abilities they had to offer, however humble. Oh what this world could learn from such courage and compassion.
Daily, I find myself asking how I can be more like my colleagues here. How can I be more courageous, more compassionate, and more generous? We so often look for hope in security, wealth and accomplishment, and are angry when these things fail us or when life does not measure up to our expectations. What if instead we looked for hope and joy in how we could serve others? What if our joy was not measured by our achievements, but by how much we had given away, by the number of people we had welcomed into our home?
In Jeremiah 29:7 it says, âWork for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.â I have always loved this verse, but struggled to comprehend how to put it into practice. People here are teaching me what this verse looks like in practice. In displacement, in towns not their own, they are seeking the peace of the entire communityânot themselves, not their family, not only those that share their homeland or religion, but of the entire community. At times, this means forgiveness and loving those that turned their back on your suffering. It takes great sacrifice to seek not your own welfare, but the welfare of others, especially when your own welfare is in such great jeopardy.
Those who have seen the destructive power of hate and experienced dehumanizing discrimination know that peace is only found in recognizing the inherent value in our shared humanity. I pray that we will see each other as God sees us: equal in value, created in Godâs image, sharing an equal inheritance in Godâs grace. If we truly saw people this way, then surely indifference would be impossible.
Finding Hope on the Front Lines
Editors Note: What follows is an update recently received from Maggie Konstanski, World Relief’s Disaster Response Manager. Maggie writes from Iraq, where she is currently working with local leaders to assist families forced from their homes because of the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
Since last May, this is my fourth month here in Iraq, and I am enjoying being able to come back to friendships and appreciating the comfort of familiarity. Local shop owners know me and are happy to see me, friendships are strengthening and my love for this place grows.
Some things have changed even since my last trip here. The frontline has been pushed back in some places, opening access to some locations and creating new opportunities. There are new tensions, howeverânew groups being targeted by violence, with civilian communities caught in the crossfire.
Another change is the temperature. Many homes here are built to stay cool in the hot summers, which means they are incredibly cold in the winter. The key to staying warm is to have four walls, a sturdy roof and a heater, luxuries that many of the displaced do not have. It breaks my heart to know that many of my friends are cold through the night, while I enjoy a warm, dry and comfortable night of sleep. These are the disparities that are so hard to comprehend. Honestly, the more I learn, the less I understand.
It is hard to explain, but even though my heart aches over these disparities and the injustice and horrors of conflict, I keep coming back to hope. While the realities of war and conflict are devastating, and the losses many, it is in these same places that I see courage, hope and love on a scale I could never have imagined. I get to spend my days with people who have lost much and suffered deeply, yet daily choose to serve others and build towards the future. I am surrounded by peacemakers. Their courage astounds me.
This week I had the privilege of training a group of local trainers who will train others in facilitating child-friendly spaces, running support groups for youth and providing psychosocial support to their communities. If the love, generosity and courage that I have seen in these people and so many others is any indication, then I believe we can pray for peace and healing with great hope. It is hard sometimes to not despair, but I now can count some of the most courageous people I have ever met as friends, sisters and brothers. What a privilege.
How a grateful Syrian family has resettled in the US
Rami never expected the devastation that would hit his homeland and his family in 2011. After high school, Rami went to university to finish his associates in veterinary science and began assisting a veterinarian by providing vaccinations and caring for cows and chickens.
Everything began to change when the Syrian revolution started in March of 2011. Protests increased as the government and police counteracted and things became increasingly violent. From their home, Rami’s family could hear the gunfire as it moved through the city and ultimately to their neighborhood.
Rami fled to neighboring Turkey, found work as an air conditioner repairman and sent for his wife and children. Rami remembers being treated poorly because he and his family were Syrian refugees. He began applying to the UN, was referred for resettlement to the US and he and his family arrived in Aurora, Illinois in 2015.
“I thank God for being able to come to the US because I know that many people do not have the chance.”
Rami hopes to continue his education in the future and return to working with animals.
Read more of Rami’s story here.
Support refugees like Rami and his family.
The relentless dream: A refugee’s journey of hope
From the time he was young, Abdulrahman idolized the American soldier as his childhood hero. He began hanging around US troops while they were patrolling the streets of Baghdad and spent 4-years working alongside Americans in combat situations, learning US military culture and ethics. âThey taught me so many things. They helped make me who I am today.â Abdulrahman began pursuing a law degree, but as conflict increased, he was forced to flee from Iraq to Turkey with his wife and baby daughter on the last day of his final exams before receiving his degree. Abdulrahman was ecstatic when he was granted passage to the US. He is now pursuing a medical degree at Everest College in Washington state and encourages newly arriving refugees to have a dream and stay motivated.
âItâs not easy, but not impossible.Unforgettable moments of joy await!â
For more details of Abdulrahman’s story, read here
Support refugees like Abdulrahman
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An update from Iraq (Update 1)
Below is an update from our Disaster Response Manager, Maggie Konstanski, in Iraq. The best way I can think of to describe what it is like being here is whiplashâconstantly being thrown back and forth between two extremes you did not know could coexist. The city where I am staying has been a place of refuge for communities fleeing violence and conflict. Within the city limits, there is peace and life has a fragile normality. However, as you drive in and around the city, the hills are dotted with the camps and shelters of the displaced. Dotting the hillsides are ancient structures, beautiful vistas and temporary shelters. The cradle of civilization now caught in chronic conflict. The depth of this placeâs history cannot be ignored. Mosul may have not been familiar to many people until recent events, but we all know the name Nineveh, Mosul’s ancient name. So whether it is fortresses of Salahadin, historical places with significance for countless traditions worldwide, or ancient monasteries, the richness and familiarity of this placeâs history is not felt in remnants but it in an ever present part of daily life.
In the media, we are given a very narrow and singular narrative of the conflict that is happening here. While that conflict is very real and the stories that come from it are truly horrific, the reality is that much of normal life goes on, even in the midst of very abnormal circumstances. Even in the face of conflict and suffering, much of life goes on as it always didâbabies are born, people form new communities, people care for children and try to reestablish routines. It is this contrast that causes the whiplash. One moment, you are all dressed up to attend the opening of a Carrefour at a new mall when only hours earlier you were sitting with people who had experienced unimaginable atrocityâwater cut off from their community in an effort to kill them, fleeing with young children while others are left behind, and realizing that the woman who has a two month old baby had fled while in the late stages of pregnancy. The stories of the missing and the dead do not seem to fit within the context of peaceful weekends spent enjoying the many beautiful places in the surrounding mountains, but yet they coexist.
For everyone I have talked to so far, recent events are understood only within the context of the past two decades and the two wars with the USA. No one was left untouched by these wars and the stories of loss, suffering and hope are numerous. These stories are shared with me never with accusation or animosity, but with a desire to have their story understood, fearful that I have only heard an incomplete version. I am reminded that it is such a common part of the human experience to want our stories heard and understood. I find I have no words appropriate to respond to these stories, and in these painful moments my heart longs for peace with a ferocity I didn’t know was possible.
For those of you looking for ways to respond, here are four simple ways:
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