Layan and her family lived a good life in Syria before the war. Her father worked as a businessman in Kuwait and made a decent income. She was a child who knew no other life, so war, death and annihilation seemed very distant. No matter where you live, nothing but experience can prepare you for …
International Medical Corps believes that passing on skills and knowledge fosters self-reliance. Training enables people who have been struck by conflict, disease or disaster to not only benefit from aid but also to develop their own, innate potential to become resilient in the face of disaster. This is why the organization has always been so …
I barely make it inside the kitchen before Mohammad and Maen offer me one delicious dish after another—vegetable soup, rice and chicken—based on relatively simple ingredients. It nevertheless tastes divine and, for a brief moment, I forget that I’m standing in a kitchen inside a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. The cooks—Maen and Mohammad—are both Syrian refugees. …
July 2018 marks one year since Iraqi forces and their allies retook the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), after three years of occupation. As many as 1 million people fled the city due to the conflict, but today 870,000 have already returned to their hometown. Hiba, Mental …
Zaid was only a young boy when air strikes and artillery fire began to plague his hometown in Syria. Originally from Daraa, the city where the war once began, Zaid, his siblings and their mother were left with no choice but to flee the country. Although they eventually found safe haven in Ajloun, Jordan, the …
Is home where your heart is, as the popular saying goes? Or is it, as Webster’s dictionary defines it, just “one’s place of residence”? What does home mean to the more than 65 million people displaced globally because of war, violence, natural disaster and persecution? They live in temporary, uncertain and often chaotic conditions, far …
At the center of this emergency lies Syria. Since the conflict started, more than 5.5 million people have left the country. The majority of them have found shelter in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Inside Syria, 6.6 million are internally displaced and an unimaginable 13 million people need humanitarian aid. What would …
With decades of experience, International Medical Corps’ medical professionals know a lot about the human body: how to perform lifesaving operations, treat chronic illnesses, address and prevent infectious diseases, and bring children back from the brink of starvation. But matters of the mind and heart can be more mysterious. Says Hadeel, “When you work with …
Hind Yousef laughs heartily as she recounts using her degree in clinical psychology to diagnose herself with a “Type A personality.” She identifies with people who need a lot of structure and organization–yet she strikes me as someone who is immensely comfortable with chaos. After all, she works in Jordan providing mental health care to …
Syria’s relentless civil war enters its eighth year this month with no sign of any end to what has become this century’s bloodiest, most brutal conflict. The fighting has claimed an estimated one-half million lives and caused nearly half the country’s pre-war population of 21 million to flee their homes for safety, either elsewhere inside …