BECAUSE… CHILDREN

While there are a number of organizations and initiatives focused on serving these children’s most basic survival needs, like all children, their developmental, emotional, and spiritual needs are urgent as well. Refugee children, like all children, need stability, security, education, opportunity, and love. Without it, not only will they suffer, but the world will suffer as a result.

McPherson serves on the Board of Directors of USA for UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, and supports several organizations that serve refugee children along the spectrum of need, including Malala Fund and KIND, both profiled below.

By age 17, Zaynab was a refugee of three wars, in Yemen, Somalia and Egypt, and had been out of school for two years before the Malala Fund was able to reach her.

War and violence drastically reduce opportunities for girls to continue their education. In areas of conflict, girls and women are the most vulnerable. Girls are 90% more likely to be out of secondary school than those living in areas without violence.

Currently, more than 130 million girls in the world don’t have access to education. Many of them are refugees.

As a young girl, Malala Yousafzai defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, when she was 15 years old. She survived and escaped as a refugee and went on to co-found the Malala Fund. Two years later, she became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in helping refugees and other vulnerable girls gain access to education.

Syria's crisis is one of the world’s most acute humanitarian emergencies. Improving access to education for displaced and refugee children from Syria is a high priority for the Malala Fund.

The Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School was established by the Kayany Foundation and provides education for adolescent Syrian refugee girls in the Bekaa Valley.

The Malala Fund currently funds programs in Za’atari and Azraq Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon.

Malala Fund’s initiative, the Gulmakai Network, supports the work of education champions in developing countries, including efforts focused on refugee children.

Metin Çorabatir is one such champion who is creating an education working group in Turkey to ensure that girls’ education is a priority in the Syrian Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP).

Nayla Fahed, president and co-founder of Lebanese Alternative Learning, uses digital learning platforms to reach vulnerable Syrian refugee communities in Lebanon.

Gamze Karadag, of Mavi Kalem, works to improve government policies  vulnerable women and girls in Turkey. Her grant will seek to improve government policies on Syrian refugee girls’ education and increase their enrolment in public Turkish secondary schools.

Malala’s forthcoming book, We Are Displaced, will focus on the refugee experience and is described as an introduction for young readers to “what it means to lose your home, your community, and the only world you’ve ever known.” Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, the book begins with Malala recounting her own experience as a refugee.

She goes on to share the personal stories of those she’s met on her various journeys to refugee camps and the cities where refugee girls and their families have settled. The stories give us a glimpse of what it was like, from the day a girl is forced to leave her home country to daily life in a refugee camp.

“What tends to get lost in the current refugee crisis is the humanity behind the statistics,” Malala said in a statement. “I know what it’s like to leave your home and everything you know. I know the stories of so many people who have had to do the same. I hope that by sharing the stories of those I have met in the last few years I can help others understand what’s happening and have compassion for the millions of people displaced by conflict.”

There has never been a more important time to hear these real refugees stories, both the trials and triumphs.

Check out Malala’s best-selling memoir, “I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World,” and “Malala’s Magic Pencil.”

Follow Malala Fund on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more ways to get involved. Donate here.

Millions of refugee children are completely on their own, alone, terrified, at huge risk, and in dire need.

Founded by Angelina Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation, KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) helps unaccompanied refugee children wherever they are, wherever they are from.

The majority of the children KIND serves have fled severe violence in their home countries. Many have been threatened or attacked by gangs, abandoned, abused, exploited, or trafficked. They come seeking safety. And that’s hard to find.

KIND, UNHCR, and their partners are working to ensure that no child appears in immigration court without high quality legal representation. They are working to advance laws, policies, and practices that ensure children’s protection and uphold their right to due process and fundamental fairness.

Unaccompanied children apprehended at the border face deportation proceedings. The majority must make their claim for protection without a lawyer. Without help, these children can be sent back to situations where their well-being, and even their lives, are in danger.

Unaccompanied children are five times more likely to gain U.S. protection if they have an attorney representing them in immigration proceedings. The United Nations found that 60 percent of children who came to the U.S. in 2014 qualified as potential refugees.

KIND staff and pro bono attorney partners at law firms, corporations, and law schools nationwide, represent unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in their deportation proceedings. Together, they work to ensure that no child stands in court alone.

Over the past ten years, KIND has supported over 16,000 unaccompanied children find the legal services they so desperately need.

"In addition to helping with basic survival needs, KIND provides programs that help to bring beauty to vulnerable refugee children and make a big difference in their physical and emotional health and wellbeing,” Susan McPherson explains. McPherson helped KIND to secure UNHCR support. “It will be a beautiful thing if these kids can be reunited with their parents ASAP.”

As part of KIND’s efforts to help children adjust to a new country, new language, new homes as well as to address the traumas which the majority of them have experienced prior to their arrival, they help to connect the children with essential medical and mental health care, educational opportunities, trauma counseling, and more.

Donate to KIND here.

Donate to UNHCR here.

Read more about Children in These Trips Make Kids More Beautiful and Raising a More Beautiful World.

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1. Image: by Andrew McConnell. Refugee Crisis in Europe. Courtesy of UNHCR.
2. Image: “Bread distribution inside Syria.” Courtesy of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation.
3. Image: Malala visits Mezon at the Zaatari Refugee Camp, in Jordan. Courtesy of the  Malala Fund.
4. Image: by Tanya Malott. Shiza Shahid, co-founder of Malala Fund, with students. Courtesy of Malala Fund.
5. Image: by Tanya Malott. Malala visits students. Courtesy of the  Malala Fund.
6. Image: by Tanya Malott. Shiza Shahid & Malala Yousafzai, co-founders of Malala Fund. Courtesy of Malala Fund.
7. Image: Malala visits with refugee students. Courtesy of Malala Fund.
8. Image: by Malin Fezehai. “Malala meets with children in a camp for Mosul evacuees.” Courtesy of Malala Fund.
9. Image: by Malin Fezehai. “Zaynab.” Courtesy of Malala Fund.
10. Image: by E. Dorfman. “The Future of Syria - Scarred.” Courtesy of Photo Unit UNHCR.
11. Image: by Tess Thomas. “Malala reunites with friends and fellow girl advocate Amina while in Nigeria.” Courtesy of the Malala Fund.
12. Image: by Roland Neveu. Sareum Srey Moch and Angelina Jolie. From “First They Killed My Father” film. Courtesy of Netflix.
13. Image: Syrian refugee children. Courtesy of UNHCR.
14. Image: Refugee children. Courtesy of KIND.
15. Image: Refugee girl. Courtesy of KIND.
16. Image: by Sebastian Rich. Refugee children. Courtesy of UNHCR.
17. Image: by Nevenka Lukin. Roma refugee in Croatia. Courtesy of UNHCR.
18. Image: by James Buck. “Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS) clinic in Zaatari refugee camp.”
19. Image: by Adam Dean. Rohingya refugees are fleeing violence in Myanmar. Courtesy of UNHCR.