The after-school program “ BEIT EL ATFAL” (HOUSE OF CHILDREN) in Damascus is an experience that continues to grow. A great understanding has been created between the teachers, the operators and the kids who attend it. The former have understood that caring for each student is the key to achieving maximum commitment and maximum results. The kids feel special, they receive the attention and encouragement that they cannot get in the overcrowded and uncomfortable classes of regular courses. This is the reciprocity that arises spontaneously when everyone recognizes the value of the other , regardless of age or role. In this climate, small and large gestures help everyday life, like the one that the teachers organized some time ago: by making an agreement with a local shop, they took all the kids to buy a pair of shoes each. A gesture that gave, in addition to the object itself, a moment of enthusiasm and affection! There are those who chose shoes for sports, those for moments of celebration, and there are still those, like Jad, who, like Jad, he finally had a pair of shoes that he liked and in his size. Until now he had worn the shoes that his mother could find at the second-hand market. And they were not always the ones he wanted, very often a size or two too big. A gesture that has remained in the hearts of the young students who, precisely in this moment of difficulty and social distancing, wanted to reciprocate by preparing a small gift for Teachers’ Day. A thought to give to each and specific to each. So Professor Danny received a small watch, his was old and out of battery and he uses the watch to mark the times of his lessons. Professor Ramiz, on the other hand, who had lost his special lighter, received a similar one as a gift. The gifts were delivered to the teachers together with the March salary (having suspended lessons and moments of meeting with the students). Being born and living in a country at war is a hard and difficult to describe experience, but with solidarity and gestures of reciprocity, each one manages to create small moments of happiness and build, every day, small changes for the future. To continue supporting the initiatives of the “Syria Emergency” program even during this period you can make a donation to AMU
