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Looking around Azraq refugee camp, in Jordan’s north-eastern desert, life seems peaceful, if rudimentary. Children run and play in the camp’s streets, parents shop at the central supermarket, and social and religious activities are growing as refugee families re-establish connections with neighbours. Some Syrian residents can be seen with crutches or other medical equipment, recovering from lingering wounds or long-untreated chronic illnesses.

Many of us have heard the term Meals on Wheels and understand the gist of what it entails, but the Canadian Red Cross program offers more than you might expect.

Yasmin sits in the paediatric ward of the Red Cross Red Crescent hospital in Azraq refugee camp, holding her two-month-old twin boys as they cough and wheeze. She appears calm and composed as she rubs the back of first Nadim and then Mohammed Nur. Both boys have developed an infection in the airways that lead to their lungs. The twins were born in Jordan days after Yasmin, 28, crossed the border as a refugee with her husband and two children.

Nawaf was three years into a challenging five-year bachelor’s degree in computer and information engineering in Damascus when the ongoing Syrian conflict forced him to put his dreams on pause. His family had already fled the country some 18 months before, but Nawaf, 24, and the oldest of seven siblings, stayed behind.

Today, December 5, marks International Volunteer Day, an annual opportunity to highlight the contributions that volunteers across the globe are making each and every day.
 

This Giving Tuesday, support the Red Cross by participating in local events across Atlantic Canada. Or, you can text redcross to 30333 to donate $5 instantly.

As December is upon us and we prepare to enjoy the holiday season with family and friends, sharing gifts, traditions and special moments with loved ones, and reflecting on the year that has passed, we also want to invite Canadians to help us bring warmth and comfort to people who are not as fortunate in communities across the country. 

Nine-year-old Amnah arrived at the Azraq Syrian refugee camp in eastern Jordan scared and in pain. She had already spent three months being bumped from house to house, community to community, before being shuttled across Syria’s southern border with Jordan in the hopes of reaching safety – and medical care. Now one of nearly 12,000 Syrian refugees living in the Azraq camp, she has yet to see her new home, meet her neighbours or visit her future school. Instead, she has spent her first 10 days at Azraq in the Red Cross Red Crescent hospital, where the medical team is helping her to heal from a three-month-old gunshot wound.