Blog | World Vision International

Wednesday, September 6, 2017 - 04:04 by

Mosul’s children suffer in sweltering camps

By Anna Zuegner, World Vision International’s Program Officer, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Thirst

After spending hours in Hassansham – one of the camps set up for people fleeing the violence in Mosul – all I want to do is drink cool water. Thirst consumes my every thought.

My skin turned red within minutes of my arrival in the camp, despite...

Light up Syria’s dark days with a message of hope

‘Heartbroken’ is a word you hear a lot in our office – particularly with all that's happened in Aleppo over the past few days. For our staff, many of whom still have family inside Syria, this is personal.

The sad truth is that although Aleppo’s destruction has left Syrian children facing some of their darkest days yet, we know that Aleppo is only one of many besieged cities in Syria and another 400,000 people may be living in similar, if not worse situations....

I can go home, why can’t they?

Last year I was given the incredible opportunity to work on World Vision’s Syria crisis response in the Middle East. At that time, the crisis had already been going for over four years and there were almost four million refugees. Now, as my time working on the Syria crisis response comes to a close, the number of refugees is nearly five million and the crisis has continued for over half a decade. Lately, as I prepare to head home to Australia, I’ve been reflecting on the...

"As Christians, we smile."

My mother is wonderful—smart, beautiful, and interesting—but she has a problem.

She cannot resist chocolate.

In high school, I brought home Mozart chocolates from Austria as a souvenir, a beautiful round candy, wrapped in gold foil with a picture of the young composer.

I didn’t plan to eat it. I just wanted to keep it as a reminder of a spectacular trip.

One afternoon my brother David came to me, clearly agitated. David is a good soul.

“You have...

Life as a Classroom - Behind the scenes

While classrooms around the world can and do look different, going to school is more-or-less a universal experience. After five long years of conflict in Syria, it can be hard to find new ways to help people “see” or “experience” the conflict in a way that moves them personally.

At World Vision, we know how the conflict is affecting children in Syria and beyond. One in four schools in Syria has been damaged, destroyed or used to shelter displaced people, over a fifth...

Syria: The soaring costs of conflict

What the world should know is that the war is costing the entire region – both Syria and its neighbours – hundreds of billions of dollars, compromising the future for an entire generation of children.

The Cost of Conflict for Children, a report coproduced by World Vision and Frontier Economics, frames the Syrian conflict through an economic lens. While we have no tool to measure the cost of a destroyed...

27 days and counting. The journey for refugees continues

Belgrade, Serbia – In a small park, located near Belgrade’s Faculty of Economics building on the city’s waterfront, the latest arrivals for Europe’s growing refugee crisis are trying to determine how to make their next move to reach safe havens in a new country.

In his halting English, a young Afghan man, named Iqrar, tells us his story. Like many of the refugees in the park, he’s hesitant to have his picture taken, but he smiles as he tells...

When hope is all you have

Bob Neufeld is International Emergencies and Corporate Communications manager for World Vision Canada on assignment in Serbia.

(Adaševci, SERBIA) – “Please, can you give us some food? We are starving.”

The man who addressed me spoke in the sad tones of someone who had seen too much grief in the past while to be ignored. He was one of several thousand Middle Eastern refugees waiting in a parking lot near the village of Adaševci, in...

Rain in Serbia could soon turn to snow

It rained last night in Belgrade. For most of the city’s residents, that weather front signaled that autumn was on its way. But for the refugees and migrants staying in the parks of Serbia’s capital city, the rains meant a miserable and cold night out in the elements.

Nagisa, age 4, was one of those out there. Her family slept in a tent, but it didn’t protect them. Instead water leaked in. Her father, Jamhsid, found some plastic to cover the tent, but by then it was...

Europe's refugee crisis: Confusion reigns, families struggle

As the leaders of the European Union come together this week for an emergency meeting to address the crisis that has seen frontline states overwhelmed by refugees and migrants, one of the biggest questions is whether the talks will bring countries together in a unified, holistic approach.

Can the EU member nations agree, not simply on sharing the burden of relocating refugees, but addressing the need to meet humanitarian needs in countries of first refuge and...