We are in Syria, but we need help

By Michael Bailey, World Vision Syria Crisis Response Communications Manager

The war in Syria hit me personally yesterday. It wasn't a bullet or shrapnel that cut into my heart. It was the tear of a friend, Vince, the break in his voice, driven by the story he was telling. A story I was filming.

Vince is part of World Vision's advance team in Syria, moving around looking for the best place for us to start work with some of the more than 4.25 million displaced people there. This is his story that broke my heart, as he tells it:

 “There was one particular incident, it was in an urban setting. There were probably fifty 50 people living in this blown-out building.  I was sitting down with them, talking about their needs.  You know: What did they need? Where did they flee from? This woman came to me. I have a little bit of medical training, I’m an emergency medical technician.… She came to me and she presented her son to me., He was 9 nine years old. He had cancer. He had a D-catheter in his belly and he was using urination bags and through my interpreter, she was telling me this was the last D-catheter and she had no more spare urination bags..  and the bag was already half-filled. She didn’t know what she was going to do. They had no money., They had no way of getting anything. She said that in the local souk the pharmacist said he could probably get more D-catheters and replacement bags, but they didn’t have the money to buy them.

Vince paused, swallowed and looked up. “When we go into this sort of environment it’s easy to programme for large populations; it’s very hard to stand in front of a 9-year-old boy. I told her I would help. I told her I wouldn’t let her down. I broke a lot of the rules that we tell ourselves.  

“The next day I went to the souk. I bought every D-catheter there out of my own pocket and every spare bag I could find.”

Vince pauses, shakes his head, "Oh man," he says, looking down at the desk, swallowing his emotions. 

“I brought it back to the family, showed them how to change the D-catheter and the bags.” Vince stops again and apologises.

“There are a lot of stories like this. This moved me on a personal level because I was right there. I knew World Vision was going to help. I can tell you this. We are operating in that area and we are doing good. We are helping a lot of people and very shortly, next week, we will roll out our new primary health care facility. It’ll have doctors on staff, nurses and midwives and we’ll be able to see 500 children a day.”

I asked Vince what his response was to those who ask what business World Vision has working in the Middle East and why we should be responding to a disaster that is manmade. 

“You're absolutely right, it's man made. But let me tell you what's not man made,” he said.. “Those children didn't ask for their houses to get bombed. They didn't ask to be drug away in the middle of the night and cover hundreds of miles. They didn't ask for that. You have millions of people, millions right now, that are displaced, afraid, scared, alone.

“There are 1,500 people in a place where we are working. And you can see it in some of the children's eyes, they are alone. They are among 1,500 people, but they're alone. 

“Why World Vision in the Middle East?,” he asks out loud. “Why not World Vision in the Middle East? These people didn't create the devastation they are in. These children didn't create the devastation they are in.  So whether it's a tsunami, whether it's an earthquake, whether it's manmade, there are people that suffer, just the same.

“From my first time going into Syria, I have sat down on rugs and on pillows. I've met with sheiks, council l members and military council members, with beneficiaries. [From the beginning], I said, we're a Christian organisation. The reason we're here is our faith has told us and has given us the strength to be here. And that is accepted. And it's accepted because of what we're doing we ensure we reach the most needy.

“It is expensive because you can't just get to the store and get something. And it's conflict and it's ever shifting lines in the middle of this conflict. So just when you think you have a handle on here's how many people are in this area, you’ve got it all figured out, how we're gonna help them, the next day 5000 more show up and you start all over again.… Yes, it's expensive, but is it worth it? How much is a child's life worth? How much are 10,000 children worth? And how much are a million children worth?  

“We need help. We're here in Syria. But we need help.”  

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