Syria. “Our aim is to get the children smiling again”

“Our aim is to get the children smiling again. And we won’t stop until that happens.”

This is the promise made by Jamila Hami, co-president of the Kurdish Red Crescent, our long-standing partners in northeast Syria.

We began working together many years ago when there was not a local healthcare system. No ambulances, no hospitals, no medicine. We are working together, day after day, to create one.

“We started work back in 2012 when the situation was really terrible.There was no healthcare here in Rojava, no facilities or medicine. There were no ambulances so we would transport wounded people in our own cars. But we never lost hope,” Jamila explains.

“We didn’t lose hope during the seiges by Daesh, Jabat al-Nusra or the regime. And we are not losing hope now. In Syria it seems as if the only rights the boys and girls have is to lose everything, including their lives. But they don’t have the right to go to school and lead a normal life.”

“Our aim is to get the children smiling again. And we won’t stop until that happens.”