Impact stories

Early on a warm Thursday morning in May, my colleague Rouwaida and I drove from Beirut to CARE’s office in Mount Lebanon. Two months ago, Syrian refugees and CARE staff ran the Dead Sea to Red Sea marathon in Jordan and raised more than 25,000 USD.

A busy street in the city of Mafraq in the North of Jordan. Merchants pull their little wagons and hand barrows across the street. Cars are whirling sand and dust while finding their way through the market stalls.

Elizabeth is one of the 100,000 South Sudanese refugees in Uganda. She fled the violence in South Sudan along with her four children. She is now one of the three hygiene promoters trained by CARE in her settlement, and benefitted from shelter and latrine…

Inside one of thousands of identical white metal huts in the desert, three Syrian women sit on their respective mattresses, handed to them by the UN refugee agency. They have terrible stories to tell.

After six months, CARE caught up with Lourdes, the mother who gave birth inside Our Mother of Perpetual Parish church in Tacloban during the height of super typhoon Haiyan. She named her baby after the typhoon’s local term, “Yolanda”.

Amman/Azraq - Yousef Filali (55) is a former air controller and businessman who decided last year to come out of retirement to work with CARE in the Azraq refugee camp.

Nyakuic Tap brought her baby to CARE’s mobile clinic set up under a shade tree in the dirt yard of Bentiu’s Catholic church. Twelve-month old Giunb Tap alternately tried

Twenty plus years in the international aid business and I’ve never been in a situation like this before. The normal words – tragic, heart wrenching, outrageous – seem superficial.

Sandra Azmy, Women’s Rights Program Initiative Manager at CARE Egypt, talks about the situation of Syrian refugees in Egypt, gender-based violence and how psychosocial activities can help start the healing process.