Last December 5th took place in the Torreciudad Sanctuary (Huesca) two awareness sessions about the situation of refugees in the Middle East by José Luis Zatarain, Communication and Volunteering Director of the FPSC.
The audience consisted of young women from associations and residence halls from all Spain between 14 and 25 years old.
The aforesaid conference is part of the activity of Development Education of the Foundation.
The conference, named “Situation of Refugees today: Syria and Iraq, What could we do?”, dealt at the beginning with different topics, like what is a NGO, the need to take into account those in risk of social exclusion, volunteerism and social actions in Spain, the concept of development cooperation, explaining the key role of local partners and examples of projects in different sectors and countries where the FPSC works, and finally the concept of humanitarian aid.
The main topic of the presentations was the situation of refugees in Syria and Iraq.
The causes of the situation where discussed: the conflict in Syria as a unique humanitarian drama without precedents since the Second World War that has triggered the displacement inside its frontiers of more than 8 millions of persons and the mass exodus of more than 4 millions of persons towards its neighbouring countries, as well as the solidarity of these hosting nations.
Topics like What is a refugee? were also discussed, highlighting it could have happened to any of us if, for example, this situation was taking place in Spain.
In order to help understanding the situation of Syrian refugees, people was informed about the projects in humanitarian aid of the FPSC with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, paying special attention to the FPSC clinic in the Za’atari refugee camp, in the North of Jordan, where the FPSC is the only permanent Spanish NGO. There, it is also offered physiotherapeutic care, as well as distributed the different supports for mobility and wheelchairs among people with disabilities. Inclusive activities for children from the camp are also performed.
Afterwards, it was discussed the topic of those Christians prosecuted in Irak, emphasising the great dignity of these persons who have been forced to abandon everything just in order not to convert into Islam.
The testimonies of those families who have suffered this situation were shown, specifically the ones of the refugees in the Virgen María de Bagdad Camp, and the FPSC’s project in there.
The last parts of the presentations were focused on the question “What can we do?”talking about the necessity to change the way we look at the information we receive about refugees, being empathetic and not just simple observers, thinking about the possibility of collaborating with social initiatives working with the refugees arriving to our country.
Each one of the sessions was finished by talking about the FPSC’s Christmas Campaign “#noestaissolos” (#you’renotalone), recording after that a great video wishing Syrians and Iraqis Christians a Merry Christmas in Arabic (AID MILAD MAYIT), that will be send to them on Christmas.