NRS Relief staff helps UAE residents pack 50,000 school bags for Syrian refugees
As part of our CSR initiatives during the month of Ramadan, our Dubai-based staff participated in Dubai Cares’ annual Back-to-School edition of Volunteer Emirates in support of refugee children affected by the Syrian crisis in Jordan.
The initiative, which ran from 26 to 29 May, saw a total of 2,000 volunteers from the UAE community come together at Al Boom Tourist Village to pack 5,000 school kits that will be distributed to children ahead of the beginning of the new school year. Each school bag consisted of notebooks, pencils, erasers, rulers and other school supplies.
According to Dubai Cares CEO Tariq Al Gurg, the Back-to-School initiative is very important because it gives the Syrian refugee children tools for education:
“This year’s Back to School edition is dedicated to the children who are affected by the Syrian crisis. The initiative is very sensitive because those children are not able to get access to education and some of those who are able to get access, they don’t have the adequate tools to get an education, such as bags and notebooks. We are doing our bit in terms of having education programs to those kids, but we are also involving the UAE community by bringing together volunteers so we can ship the bags to Syrian refugee camps in Jordan.”
According to Dubai Cares, Jordan recorded 657,628 registered Syrian refugees as of February 2018 UNHCR report, with 51 percent of those being children. Although 126,127 Syrian children were enrolled in public school during the 2016–2017 academic year, 40 percent of school-aged child refugees remain without an education. In Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp, which today houses more than 80,000 Syrian refugees, around 25 percent of the camp’s 28,599 school-aged children are out of school.