Syria Crisis: Help Comes From Unexpected Places

Here’s the thing about helping: it’s not just for those with the means to give.

Helping is an endless resource. It’s not held back by social class or status or privilege.

We all can help.

We’ve seen it over the years, the outpouring of love and donations to provide relief on the frontlines—medicine, food packs for families, shelter. We’ve seen it create jobs, start businesses, and provide healing therapy for women and kids. It’s rebuilt homes and created bridges between communities.

We’ve seen help show up on the frontlines of Fallujah and Aleppo, catching refugees as they flee.

And now in the crisis in Northeast Syria, as Turkish bombs rain down, as thousands of families flee for their lives—some of them for the second time.

You can show up. You are showing up with food packs that feed a family for a week. You’re showing up with mobile clinics and ambulances to reach those on the run, providing trauma medicine and general treatment.

But here’s the thing about helping—it unites us all. Sometimes in unexpected ways.

We’re seeing the most marginalized, those with the very least to give, show up alongside us all. Leading the way. We visited a maximum-security prison while in Chicago this week. Some of the men incarcerated there are raising their hands to give. From the $0.30 an hour they earn, they asked if they can help save lives in Syria too.

Our Syrian refugee friends in neighboring Iraq are collecting items to give to the latest wave of refugees in search of safety. We were astounded when we saw the generosity of our friends as we visited the refugee camp this week.

Help comes from all places. Love shows up. When we think the world is broken, when all we can see is fractured countries, rubble and ruin, fleeing families and impossible pain, love is present. Love reminds us that we—all of us—take care of each other. We hold each other up, we give to others. We help.

Will you join us? Join our incarcerated friends who won’t let prison walls contain their love. Join our refugee friends who refuse to be defined by what they lost and instead choose to be defined by what they have to give.

The crisis in Syria is dire and these families need our help, our love. Will you join this incredible community? There is space enough for us all. And together, we can help. We are not powerless.

We can love anyway.

Give now and send help to families on the run in Syria.