As you may recall, our 2015 Christmas Eve offering was designated to help refugees in Southern Jordan by partnering with Questscope. Our 2016 Christmas Eve offering is also given to Questscope to continue providing medicine, education, clothing, and the Gospel to refugees in Jordan.
A Brief Recap:
Since 2011, over 4 million Syrian refugees have been forced to flee their country and seek refuge in neighboring nations. In addition to the 630,000 UN-registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, there are also hundreds of thousands of unregistered refugees. More than 90% of all refugees do not live in refugee camps. They’re scattered throughout cities and towns – a hidden population with no resources, no money, and no support system.
Forgotten and Invisible:
There is a forgotten and invisible population of refugees in the southern port city of Aqaba, Jordan. Because they are unregistered, there is no funding or safety net for these people. They cannot obtain legal documents, enroll their children in school, or apply for work permits. Because of the difficulty of serving an unregistered population, there are no other organizations who will work with them. Questscope is the only one who didn’t say it was too hard or too much.
Some families have been separated when fathers and husbands were arrested or detained at the Syrian border, leaving the women and children extremely vulnerable. Children are often forced to go to work doing menial and dangerous jobs to support their families. And in desperation, mothers have resorted to selling their daughters through early marriage contracts in order to feed their younger children.
Helping People in Need:
These families are living in very poor and insecure conditions and have little food. Many are starving.
People with chronic diseases and health problems will only see these conditions get worse because they do not have access to medical care or treatment. Due to lack of funds, one pregnant woman was unable to deliver her baby in a hospital. Our coordinator on-the-ground contacted all of the available agencies and no one would help. We took her on and soon after she gave birth in a hospital.
This woman subsisted on dried bread that she would keep on the floor at night. Since she had no furniture, she and her baby would also sleep on the floor. Rats would come in at night to eat the bread and eventually she started noticing bite marks in the cheek of her baby. We knew that any money we gave her would go to food, so we bought her a crib and made sure she was set up with monthly food vouchers.
The Summary For Now:
Because of Wooddale’s commitment to serve and walk alongside a population that everyone else rejected we’ve been able to give families the help they so desperately need to keep their families alive and together.
This project will provide 100 families (approximately 538 people) with food vouchers, medicine and medical care, and non-food items (like a crib) for twelve months. Children who would have been sold into early marriage and child labor now have a chance to go to back to school and reach for a more hopeful future.