Dubai Cares packs 50,000 school bags for Syria pupils
Backpacks containing back-toschool necessities were given to 50,000 displaced Syrian children in Jordan, thanks to Dubai Cares and Save the Children.
To align with the UAE’s Year of Giving spirit, Dubai Cares launched the Back to School edition of its Volunteer Emirates initiative in June to support children driven from Syria to Jordan by the conflict.
The initiative received overwhelming support from the UAE community as 3,000 volunteers from all over the country came together to assemble the kits during Ramadan.
The school packages were distributed in five provinces of Jordan – Ajloun, Irbid, Karak, Ma’an, and Tafilleh.
Tariq Al Gurg, chief executive of Dubai Cares, said the organisation was committed to helping children affected by the war to go back to school with minimum disruption.
“The initiative also recognises Union Co-op’s immensely generous sponsorship for this initiative, supported by a group of passionate UAE volunteers, to provide hope for a brighter future to these children and remind them that the world has not abandoned them,” he said.
The chief of Save the Children thanked Dubai Cares for its support and its dedicated team of volunteers who assembled the backpacks and school kits.
“This support gives us such a great push forward to keep delivering hope to the most marginalised and deprived children across the kingdom,” said Rania Malik.
The United Nations Refugee Agency reported last year that school-age children and young people accounted for almost a third of the 633,644 officially registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, of whom more than 90,000 are children with no access to education.
Because of the influx of refugees, public schools in Jordan have restructured the school day to accommodate Jordanian and Syrian pupils.