This Christmas and New Year we have raised $A15,000 to purchase warm clothes for refugee children for .
Our initial 2021 Winter Christmas Appeal was launched in October 2021. For the third year we again partnered with the local Non Government Organisation The Lotus Flower to purchase warm clothes for refugee children this winter. After raising and sending $A8,000 by December 2021, over 1,000 x refugee children were provided with warm jackets and socks in the Essyan, Domiz 2 and Rwanga Refugee camps and Duhok city in Kurdistan.
By early January 2022, Kurdistan and Syria were experiencing one of the coldest winters in many years. Families in the refugee camps were experiencing flooding in their tents. Many tents were at risk off collapsing due to the heavy snowfalls. Plunging temperatures put children at risk and many had no clothes suitable for the cold winter.
We launched the “Emergency Winter Crisis Appeal” to raise funds to provide warm clothes for some of the 1,500 Syrian refugees who had recently arrived at Bardarash Refugee Camp. Within a few weeks we were able to send an additional $A7,000 which was used to buy hundreds of jackets, coats, sweatshirts, by our local partner NGO, The Lotus Flower.
Vian Ahmed, Regional Director of The Lotus Flower, expressed her gratitude to Operation Hope and all our donors:
“Recent clashes between ISIS fighter and Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria, has made many thousands of families desperate. Residents have been fleeing their homes in fear of a resurgence of the deadly attacks of 2014. In recent days more than 1,500 individuals have crossed the Iraqi border into Kurdistan. Shelter has been provided at Bardarash Refugee Camp, but they are in desperate need of emergency support. It’s especially critical for women and children, who find themselves marginalised during these harsh winter months. The Lotus Flower, with kind support from our partner Operation Hope Australia, teamed up with Bardarash camp management to distribute hundreds of pieces of warm clothing for children who recently arrived at the camp. The 500 jackets, coats and sweatshirts were badly needed, as families find themselves a long way from home, with few possessions.”
Vian Ahmed, Regional Director, The Lotus Flower
Our incredible donors have respond extremely generously to this appeal. Your support is helping to ease the desperate circumstances of the most at risk refugees. We could not fund these projects without your support.
Our gratitude also to Vian Ahmed, Regional Director, The Lotus Flower based in Duhok, Kurdistan for her invitation to participate in the Appeal. It has been wonderful to partner with The Lotus Flower who have organised logistics, purchasing, transport, distribution and distribution of the winter clothes. We are thankful for their continuing presence in the camps and their work with Refugees and IDPs in Kurdistan.
Please continue to support our work in Kurdish Refugee Camps.
