Jordan - Syria Refugee Relief fund

Walaa and her family used to spend time together gathered around the TV at home in Syria watching their favorite shows. Movies and TV captivated Walaa. She often filled the hours after school or before bed immersed in the worlds of Syrian TV and imagining how she might create her own productions one day.

“I have dreamed of becoming a filmmaker for as long as I can remember,” she says.

When the war in Syria began in 2011, it interrupted those dreams and transformed her reality into something much harsher than the series she watched or dreamed of creating. In early 2014, constant attacks and fighting drove Walaa’s family from their home. Soon after, a bomb exploded near Walaa’s father Mohammed, piercing his leg with shrapnel and ultimately forcing doctors to amputate it.

“Had there been better medical care, my leg would have been treated easily,” Mohammed says. “But because of the war, not only was I injured, but treating my injury timely enough was not possible, so I lost my leg.”

Four years later, Walaa, now 15, and her family live in Azraq, a small, remote, desert town 65 miles east of Jordan’s capital Amman. Mohammed works in a small coffee shop and fixes electronics. Managing the bustling coffee shop requires Mohammed to be quick and nimble, which can be difficult on one leg. He relies on his son Nasr, 12, to help him.

“He is the leg that I lean on,” Mohammed says.

The poignancy of such a supportive and loving father-son relationship hasn’t escaped Walaa’s attention or her camera lens. Walaa recently directed and produced a short documentary about her father and brother called “The Little Engineer,” so named for Nasr’s penchant for fixing electronics, a lifelong hobby Mohammed has passed to his son. Walaa created the film as part of a CARE-supported film school at Azraq’s camp for Syrian refugees. At the film camp, professional filmmakers instruct and mentor aspiring filmmakers like Walaa. She produced “The Little Engineer” with three other Syrian refugee girls her age.

“The concept behind the documentary was my idea,” she says. “I wanted to showcase an example of a Syrian refugee family struggle, especially how, due to our circumstances, a child is forced to juggle school and work. It is not easy, and I wanted to shed the spotlight on it. I am very happy with the end product!”

School is one of Walaa’s biggest joys, and her favorite subject is science. But few things excite her like making movies.

“The film school helped me technically, so I will already have an idea about production, directing and filming if I succeed in fulfilling my dream in the future.”

Walaa and her family hope to resettle in another country where she can chase her filmmaking dreams. As with so many refugees, however, resettlement is hardly guaranteed and fraught with challenges.

“I was approached by a man I thought I knew well, promising to help us resettle in Canada,” Mohammed says. “In order to help make our resettlement happen, he demanded we pay $700. ‘These fees are a mandatory deposit,’ he told me. ‘They will be returned to you at the airport before you leave Jordan.’”

Instead, the man took Mohammed’s money and disappeared, dashing the family’s hopes and leaving them in debt.

“What saddens me most is that we had hope, so much of it, and it was all taken away suddenly."

This was not the first time the family had — and lost — hope for resettlement. Early last year they received news they’d be resettled in the United States. But that prospect quickly faded when the Trump administration banned citizens of several countries, including Syria, from entering the U.S.

Despite such obstacles, Walaa keeps her camera trained on the special moments — her brother fetching coffee for their father or fixing electronics by his side. It helps keep her dream alive, especially as it takes shape around new moments and experiences.

“One day, I will talk about the situation of Syrian refugees, and about all that has happened in Syria since the beginning of the war,” Walaa says. “Even when the war ends, the suffering of Syrians will not end soon. It will take time for life in Syria to become normal again. That is what I want to talk about. I have always believed in one thing: If you have a dream and you work hard enough, you can certainly achieve it.”

Source: https://www.care.org/farfromhome/aspiring-filmmaker-highlights-bonds-in-her-refugee-community

Links:

• Aspiring Syrian Filmmaker Highlights the Bonds in Her Community
• An Aspiring Filmmaker's Story within Her Refugee Community

Read an update from the President and CEO of CARE USA, Michelle Nunn, on how we can "ensure that when it comes to protecting refugee families and ensuring safe migration, American compassion and values prevail."

"As tragedy was unfolding on the U.S.-Mexico border this summer, I was thousands of miles away, visiting a very different border.

I met Walaa, a 15-year-old Syrian refugee and aspiring filmmaker, at the Azraq Refugee Camp in northern Jordan, near Syria. Her film about the relationship between her father and her 12-year-old brother won top prize at a camp youth film festival. Her brother calls their father a hero for not letting the bomb that cost him a leg stop him from working at a coffee shop and creating his own repair business. Walaa’s father says his son is the real hero and describes in the film how he is able to find dignity in work only because his son works by his side, doing chores that are impossible for him: “He’s the leg that I stand on.”

Each day’s encounters with families like Walaa’s, many reunited or at least strengthened by America’s investment in humanitarian aid for refugees, were jarringly juxtaposed with television images of American power deployed at our border to separate children from their parents. Nothing less than American outrage at the president’s policy ended the era of family separation.

But Washington still weighs steps that would lead to more refugee children separated from families across a strife-torn world. We know it’s wrong; the question is whether our shame about the policy at our border extends to other American policies that affect borders the world over. I refuse to accept that America’s sense of moral urgency only applies at home when cameras are rolling. The time is urgent not just to turn an abhorrent moment into an activist movement, but to ensure that when it comes to protecting refugee families and ensuring safe migration, American compassion and values prevail. Here are four steps we can take, now.

First, face reality. There are more displaced people on our planet today than at any time in recorded history. And the global refugee crisis is growing, driven by conflict, drought, and famine, all exacerbated by climate change. Children are bearing the brunt. Last year alone, 174,000 separated children registered as refugees worldwide. They are among the staggering 28 million children displaced globally, from Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan to South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and southern Ethiopia.

Record displacement is a challenge of our time. CARE has more than tripled the number of people we reach worldwide through emergency assistance within the past five years. The governments we work with, including Jordan, are being strained under the weight of refugee flows. For every 10 Jordanians there is one refugee — the equivalent of the entire population of Canada moving to the United States. For our interests and those of our allies, we need a family-first policy for the long term. Cutting off assistance to refugees at our borders and those around the world is the wrong answer; the United States should be leading the way to find the right ones.

Second, it would be a tragic mistake for the administration to reduce even more drastically — to 25,000 or less — our annual cap on refugee resettlement. We are on pace in 2018 to resettle the fewest number of refugees since 1977. If the United States, traditionally the world’s leader on this issue, cuts in half our ceiling on refugee settlement, after already cutting it in half when the president took office, this will send a message globally that we are no longer who we have always proudly said we are.

Third, instead of slashing refugee humanitarian aid as the administration has attempted in its two budgets, we need to increase it in concert with our family values and in allegiance with allies who bear the greatest burden. Congress has been the first line of defense against American retrenchment and should be lauded. But we can do more, including in our own hemisphere, by addressing the underlying reasons families head north in the first place: governance, crime and violence. We can help alleviate it for pennies on the dollar of what we spend to triage an ever-unfolding tragedy. Foreign assistance should be deployed as a first resort to create secure borders for the long term.

Last, we should start listening to the refugees themselves. It’s no coincidence that when Walaa had the chance to tell her own story, she turned the lens on the bond between parent and child. One day the lens of history will focus on America’s role in this period of unprecedented human displacement. Let’s hope it shows an America that, rather than cutting the legs out from under refugees, chose to support families in their darkest hours around the world, acting as the leg upon which they can stand."

- Michelle Nunn, President and CEO, CARE USA

*This piece originally appeared on The Hill website on August 21, 2018 linked in this report.

Links:

• http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/402806-four-steps-to-protect-families-at-the-worlds-borders