“I’ve been plunged into despair but I’ve been healed by looking around and seeing what we do for each other to bring each other back up from the depths.” Neil Gaiman
“We watch the news about Syria and the situation is bleak. In May when I travelled to Jordan with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and visited Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps with fashion designer Georgina Chapman and her husband, film producer, Harvey Weinstein, the scale of the refugee situation was extraordinary to us. Conflict was forcing innocent people in love with their country to abandon their homes and bleed, in their thousands, across its borders. How are they able to cope with losing everything? How are the neighbouring countries expected to cope with the flood of human beings overwhelming their infrastructure and their already scarce resources?
6 months on and the numbers of refugees and internally displaced have climbed, not inch by inch, but in dizzying numbers: over 6.4 million people displaced inside Syria, over 3 million refugees outside Syria. Spirits have been broken, homes wrecked, lives destroyed, and a generation of children traumatized.
But somehow, still, in amongst the horror and the nightmares, there are still many small and glorious stories of survival and hope, resilience and dignity. I have already shared many of them with you, but there are more to tell. I’m sharing them in order to build a connection between the people I have met – Ayman, Ibrahim, Um Murad and the rest – and with you. Yes, you. I’m asking, on their behalf and UNHCR’s, for help, because if you could have the conversations that we had, if only you could sit and speak to the refugees, face to face, you would see that we really are the same, that we really are part of one family. And, at its best, a family does all it can to support each other.”
– Neil Gaiman