The school’s supporting cast

It is a Herculean task: every month, the Syrian Kids Foundation must raise $60,000 to cover all the expenses of the Al Salam School because no students pay tuition. The school can rely on a few constant donors and the fruits of four annual fundraisers. But the majority of the money comes in the form of PayPal donations and cheques, sent by strangers who are moved by the school’s story. What makes it even more impressive: the foundation has not yet been approved as a charity, so it cannot offer receipts for tax deduction.

“Somehow, it always works out. We always struggle, we always worry,” says Faisal Alazem, executive director of the Syrian Kids Foundation.

“The only thing sustaining this project are these random people, offering time, money and resources.”

He is one of them. Neither Alazem nor principal Hazar Mahayni are paid for their work for the school.

Here are five people who have supported the school in the past year:

Ghina Al Safadi, teacher, Montreal Donation: $105 monthly. The English as a second language teacher and translator sends enough money every month to cover the tuition of three students. “You are building the life of a child versus throwing them to hatred, exploitation, recruitment to the armed forces. It’s disastrous,” says Al Safadi, also a teacher at École Al Salam in Montreal. “It’s my conscience driving me to do this. All of us have to do something. We can’t say it’s bigger than me.”

Al Pace, real estate developer, Toronto Donation: $20,000 Pace started The Pace Family Foundation with his wife in 2007 to help children, primarily in Africa. They practise “strategic philanthropy,” looking for small projects run by local NGOs, where “you can help people with quite small amounts of money,” says Pace. When he read about Al Salam School and its principal, Hazar Mahayni, it fit the bill. “She’s obviously having success,” he says. “Syria is not going to be in this mess forever. They will need to go back.”

Syrian student associations, Concordia and McGill universities, Montreal Donation: $910 That’s how much the students working the bake sale booth in Concordia’s student building raised on Oct. 16. They hold the sale every Friday, bringing in home-baked samosas and rice pudding to raise money for Al Salam. Students at McGill and Concordia have raised $7,000 so far. “It’s a surprise every week, when we make a good amount of money,” says Geeda Ismail, 21, a first-year McGill student who fled Damascus in June 2012. She understands the price of the war personally. When her father dropped her off to take her Syrian baccalaureate exam, “instead of saying ‘do well,’ he said, ‘if you hear anything, duck,’ ” she says. “I don’t have any friends left there. They are all in different countries.”

Daniel Kudish, co-owner of the Image Salon, Montreal Donation: $2,479 When the photo editing company he founded with his wife, Davina, turned a year old in September, they decided to celebrate by giving a penny from every image they edited to a different cause. Al Salam was their first recipient. “We became parents a year and a half ago, so we connect to things that have to do with kids,” said Kudish. “To think we are providing such a comfortable living to our little boy, and to think that these kids have to trek for days and be separated from their families, is heart-wrenching. The only thing that separates us from less fortunate people is the location.”

Farris Barakat, 25, founder of the Light House project, Raleigh, N.C. Donation: $50,000 through dental care to students Barakat visited the school last summer with his father and 40 volunteer dentists with the Syrian American Medical Society. They came to complete the mission Barakat’s younger brother, Deah, had been planning last spring, before he was fatally shot. The group treated more than 700 patients at the school over 10 days.

Farris acted as a translator and childcalmer. “I was talking to a 7-year-old girl who had lost her brother and father, and she was not getting nearly as much support and comfort from the world as she deserves,” he said. “Our lives just seem to matter more. That was annoying to me.” The team plans on returning this summer. Catherine Porter