Facebook Group Aims to Help Drought Victims

SMN No. 9, September 23, 2010

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A group of Syrian volunteers are using Facebook to coordinate aid for people displaced by drought and forced to live in makeshift tents cities in the outskirts of Damascus.

Several years of drought in the once fertile area of the Jazeera, in the north-east of Syria, have driven tens of thousands of people out of their lands and farms. Many migrated to the surroundings of large cities to work in the industrial and farming sectors.

In camps outside Damascus, they lack basic services like water and electricity, poor sanitary conditions make infectious diseases rampant, and children are missing out on school.

Syrian cyberactivists are trying to change this reality or at least improve it. A group recently created on Facebook is mobilising efforts to send volunteers to teach children in the camps.

The group is aiming to offer classes twice a week for a period of three months, with the help of the volunteers.

So far, the group has been gathering the contacts of people willing to participate in the project.

Earlier this month, members of the Facebook group collected gifts and sweets to distribute in seven different refugee camps around Damascus for the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

A three-minute Youtube video shows activists giving gifts to children amid the squalor of the camps.