Today I met a girl whose face you'll never see because she's too scared about what will happen when she returns to Syria, "I don't want my photograph to be taken because I'm afraid that when we go back something might happen to us." If I quoted her on everything she said, you would say I made it up. She's 12 going on 25.
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Katy Wright is our Head of UK Government Relations. She recently travelled to Lebanon with women's rights campaigner, Lady Fiona Hodgson, and Oxford MP and Oxfam Association Member, Nicola Blackwood. They visited to see how Oxfam is dealing with the humanitarian response in the region, but what stayed with Katy was the human impact of the Syrian crisis - and the story of Manal.
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Today is Mark Goldring's first official day as the new CEO of Oxfam. In the last few weeks he's been getting reacquainted with Oxfam, meeting key figures and visiting our overseas programmes. He's currently in Jordan to see, first-hand, the crisis that is taking place in the region. The trip has, in his own words, "brought home the horror of the situation in Syria." Oxfam needs the international community to meet urgent...
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The number of people leaving Syria to seek refuge in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan, and the number being displaced with Syria itself, is increasing everyday. We've put together this infographic to help sum up the situation. The numbers are really quite staggering.
I think the infographic pretty much speaks for itself. Putting the numbers into a UK context goes some way to helping us comprehend the scale of the...
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Jordan's sprawling desert refugee camp, Zaatari, is now home to over 170,000 Syrian refugees. Adapting to life there is hard for all refugees, but especially so for those with disabilities and special needs.
I met 12 year-old Sidra, who'd arrived just two days earlier, with her mother and brother on the main street near the camp entrance. They'd just gone to a hospital in the camp...
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As the Syria Crisis continues to grow, the different things people are doing to support families caught up in the crisis are helping to inspire hope. Syrian-born artist, Issam Kourbaj, has been exhibiting his new art project, Excavating the Present, in a former furnishing emporium in Cambridge since 22 March. Proceeds from the exhibition are being donated to different charities, including Oxfam, and continues
until 14 April.
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You can often find an interesting lunchtime talk to go along to when you're working in Oxfam House. Today's talk was on the Syria Crisis. One of the things that stood out for me was hearing about the candlelit vigils that happened a couple of weeks ago to mark two years since the start of the crisis.
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This week, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) launched its Syria Crisis Appeal. The DEC is made up of 14 charities, including Oxfam, and it makes the decision to pool the fundraising efforts of these charities and launch an appeal if the scale and severity of an emergency demands it. Oxfam's own appeal has already raised £1.23 million but much more is needed. Here, Lucy Brinicombe tells us what it's like for Syrian families...
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