Classes begin today in a new women's shelter expansion at an elementary school in Syria founded by an advocacy and support organization with alumni of Lakeside High School.
The Wisdom House school for orphans started its second year of courses for elementary school students earlier this month in a village of the Idlib Governorate province in northwest Syria. The school was founded and funded by the Syrian Emergency Task Force in 2016 with the support of a working group led by Jerry Adams, of Conway, and the village council.
Co-founder and executive director Mouaz Moustafa is a graduate of Lakeside and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Fellow Lakeside and UCA alum Natalie Larrison is the organization's director of outreach.
"I am so proud of the communities in Arkansas and people like Jerry Adams from Conway, who have cared and connected personally with this school, raising more than $53,000 over the past year," Larrison said. "We have managed to pay teachers and staff, operating costs and we have provided an underground location, a school bus, computers, projectors and internet for the school."
The women's center, "Tomorrow's Dawn," is meant to support and sustain women widowed by the Syrian Civil War through workshops and courses to help them economically. Lectures and workshops will be provided to teach first aid and help attendees deal with psychological trauma. A Lakeside alum, who wished to remain anonymous, provided a donation earlier this year to pay seamstresses in the village to provide school uniforms for the students.
The working group in Conway helped the SETF provide startup funds for the women's center to operate for the next three months. The organization is now working to identify other donors to support the initiative moving forward.
"Arkansans have proven themselves to be global citizens and humanitarians continuing for the second year in a row to support the education of orphans in the midst of war, giving them a future when they had no other hope," Moustafa said.
All donations to The Wisdom House Project directly fund operations of the elementary school and women's center. Donations can be made online to support the projects at http://thewisdomhouseproject.com and http://syriantaskforce.org.
Updates are also posted on both websites. Photos were posted in May of graduation ceremonies from the school's first class of kindergartners.
At least 500,000 Syrian people are estimated to have died during the ongoing civil war and the total is likely much greater. Hundreds of thousands more are feared to have died in prison or fleeing from the conflict.
The country's population was about 22 million before the war began in 2011. About half of the more than 14 million civilians displaced by the war have become international refugees throughout the world.
"You can avoid being a bystander in many ways, including learning more about the conflict and its background, attending a screening or watching documentaries about Syria, writing a letter of hope, donating to our humanitarian projects or following the work of SETF and the Wisdom House," Larrison said.
Moustafa and Larrison were invited by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Middle Eastern Studies Program for a screening of the "Red Lines" documentary tonight in the Student Service Center Room 104 on campus. The 2014 documentary followed Moustafa and former SETF field director Razan Shalab-al-Sham as they worked to serve the people of Syria.
The SETF helped facilitate a visit to Arkansas in October by Mazen Alhummada, a Syrian from Deir Ezzor and former detainee and victim of torture by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Alhummada will speak Oct. 9 at the Clinton School of Public Service as part of a speaking tour and will be accompanied by a screening of the documentary, "Syria's Disappeared," in which he is featured.
"I am so proud of Hot Springs, Conway, Little Rock and other wonderful Arkansans standing on the right side of history," Moustafa said. "It makes me feel proud to be an Arkansan and an American and to come back to my home state."
Members of the SETF team recently returned from a border town in Turkey, where they hosted a congressional delegation and delivered $5,000 for the Wisdom House, $4,000 for the women's shelter and more than 500 Letters of Hope for people inside Syria. The school provided their own colorings the SETF will distribute to school, community and worship groups who have supported the organization. Larrison said people from around the world have supported the Letters of Hope campaign.
"It's one of the simplest ways you can help and it just shows that everyone can do something," Larrison said. "Some messages are thoughts, prayers, drawings or even poems. Anything encouraging lets the people suffering in Syria know that people in America care about them."
The SETF has engaged with universities, high schools and elementary schools throughout the state to educate students about the crisis in Syria and the humanitarian situation. Lakeside Middle School closed the 2016-17 school year with a week of activities and lessons about Syria, as well as a presentation by Larrison and Moustafa.
"For me, I could not be more proud that both of my alma maters, Lakeside in Hot Springs and UCA in Conway, have been so supportive and essential to our outreach in schools, implementing content on Syria and our humanitarian work into learning opportunities for students," Larrison said. "As a former teacher my favorite part of my work is speaking with students about Syria and connecting them to the Wisdom House directly."
The SETF is asking more lawmakers to join the Friends of a Free, Stable and Democratic Syria Caucus in the United States House of Representatives and support the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which already passed the House, in the Senate.
Local on 09/19/2017