Hope Rising

This collection is from a recent trip I made to Mafraq, a city in northern Jordan. Some of you may be aware that Jordan is how home to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the crisis in their home country. As my senior project, I plan to visit Mafraq periodically and help these people--and hopefully go beyond that too. I helped with distributing mattresses, blankets, portable stoves, bottles of gas, and pillows for five and a half hours with a volunteer team. Although the closest large refugee camp is 15 km outside of Mafraq, there are many families in need living within the city. Those in our group proficient in Arabic would ask the people we visited about their stories. Many of the women are widowed, or away from their husbands who could not come across the border. The kids need schooling, but there are few options available to them. Some of the refugees refuse to move to the large refugee camps because of the chaos, so as a result they rent out apartments with their meager savings until--they hope--they can find a better place and some kind of employment. Being conservative, some of the people we met declined to be photographed, but many warmed up to us quickly and even posed with us. The people who yearn to have their stories recorded and told are the ones that make me the saddest. I am collaborating with the CMA Church in Mafraq, a government-approved distribution center. In turn, the church cooperates with other organizations to help refugees. The pictures of boxes were taken in their storage room, which is filled to the rafters with donations of all kinds--toys, clothes, baby prams, hairbrushes, other necessities, and odds and ends.