̽»¨¾«Ñ¡

It’s time to speak out and #StandWithrefugees once again--it’s time to pick up your protest sign.

Ahlan Simsim reaches children and families wherever they are—from classrooms, health clinics, and learning centers to TVs and mobile devices—through programming integrating direct services for families with award-winning educational media, including a locally produced version of Sesame Street.

Over 600,000 Syrian refugees are currently in Jordan, 80% of whom live in urban areas among Jordanian neighbors.  In February the ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ organized a two-week social-therapy workshop at our women's center in the city of Irbid that brought together Syrian refugee teenagers and their Jordanian counterparts.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, neighbors are working together with the ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ to build up and improve their communities. They're making and influencing decisions that affect their communities' futures—for example, deciding whether to build new schools or health centers, improve roads or construct water collection points.

An ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ aid worker (his identity obscured for security reasons) takes us inside Areesha displacement camp, northeast Syria. Here 43,000 people who fled ISIS are crowded into a camp built for less than half that number.  Some 25,000 people are living on one piece of bread a day. Others have nothing to eat. The ̽»¨¾«Ñ¡ is responding with emergency meals, which we have distributed to 5,000 families.

Despair and devastation ring loud in headlines defined by the hopelessness and loss felt by millions everywhere. The weight of those words is heavy, and the futures of many communities seem uncertain at best. But brave individuals are rewriting their story. Theirs is not a story of hopelessness and loss, but one of optimism and strength.

A Syrian mother stopping with her family on the island of Lesbos, Greece — one of more than half a million desperate people who have fled to Europe this year from countries in chaos.