In a few weeks time, I will be packing my backpack and travelling once again to the country I called home for the first three months of this year – Lebanon. Whilst being back there, a few friends and I are going to be travelling around the countryside to provide Syrian refugees in the country with winter blankets, warm clothes, and anything else we can give them to help. It’s the least we can do at this time of terrible strife in Lebanon’s Levantine neighbour.
The winter in the Middle East is still in its infancy, but already people are dying from the biting cold, having been forced to flee their homes with whatever they can carry, and live in hastily erected shelters by the side of the road in a country that is not their own. The civil war back home in Syria to the east rages on with no signs of let-up. More than 120,000 people have died, and that number continues to rise, whilst the atrocities pile up.
Our team of awesome individuals has already managed to raise almost $800 thanks to Bishop Stopford School in Kettering (my old secondary school in the UK) purely from donations from people wanting to help. Now, we’re continuing to raise funds until we set forth to Lebanon. Every penny will be spent by us personally to buy supplies for people in need who are living in makeshift camps, and we will be hand delivering what we purchase to families who are without a place to call home, and with little hope on the horizon for peace in their country any time soon.
Our aim is to make a difference for those people living in unregistered refugee camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Flanked to the west by the mountain range that divides the valley from the coast, and to the east by the peaks that make up the Syrian border, the temperatures in the Bekaa regularly fall below freezing, leaving survival in basic camps a struggle in the extreme. People are losing their lives here, and being ‘unofficial’ refugees ensures many camps – including the one I visited near Zahlé, on the side of the Beirut-Damascus highway back in March, unsupported by many NGOs.
One day, the almost one million Syrian people currently living in Lebanon as refugees will hopefully be able to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. But for now they can’t, and they desperately need help. One member of the team, Roshina, is running a blog, which you can find through this link, to help us raise funds. Incorporated into that is a secure donation service via Paypal. If you can spare anything this Christmas, please take a moment to donate. Even $5 to will help, it all adds up, and it will make a difference to somebody’s life this winter season! Thank you.
