A happy outcome for a brave Syrian refugee girl

Here at the Human Values Foundation (HVF) we are starting a community blog series. We will be asking members and friends of the HVF to share a story about one of their experiences related to the HVF and how it demonstrates the life-enriching potential of living our values.

To start our series we are delighted to share a story from the Chief Executive Officer of the HVF, Rosemary Dewan. For Rosemary this story captures the values of community and global connections.

To encourage and celebrate children’s understanding of the power of positive values, the Human Values Foundation education charity runs a global story writing competition each year and publishes the best entries in a downloadable booklet.

At the end of September 2019 we received an enquiry from Ratna Sagar P Ltd, a publishing house in New Delhi.  This company publishes textbooks for school children in India and is always seeking stories and poems of exceptional quality to include in their books.

From looking at our website, it was felt that our organizations share common ground in our aims to make education more inclusive and values-based and so we were asked for permission to use two stories from our 2016 Stories On Values booklet, one centred on the value of bravery entitled The Octopus and the Little Fish.  It was written and illustrated by Sham, a girl aged 11, who attended a school for refugees in Syria run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

We wrote to our contact, who had arranged for refugee children in UNRWA schools throughout Gaza, Jordan, The Lebanon, Syria and West Bank to join in our competition in 2016.  We explained the opportunity for Sham to have her story published. However, as she would have been only 14 years old by then, we needed to locate Sham and her parents so they could give the necessary permission.   This was a considerable challenge in war-torn Syria.

The UNRWA Field Officers in Syria made enquiries in the school Sham had attended but there was no record of her there.  Undeterred, they extended their enquiries but without success and in mid-November we were advised that colleagues in Syria would continue the search.

At the end of November a clerk from the Education Department in UNRWA’s Syria Field Office wrote with the excellent news that Sham’s family had been found safe and well.  Relieved and delighted, we were then able to connect the two parties.  The editor in India was overjoyed to know that Sham and her parents were safe.  He asked us to pass on his gratitude to the UNRWA representatives, and also his profound admiration for their endeavours in the troubled region.

Let’s hope that brave Sham will derive much happiness from her marvellous ability to write and illustrate stories.  

‘You never know how all the things you do to try and make the world a better place will create happiness.’ - Rosemary Dewan

If you have been inspired by this story and the work of the HVF, please consider donating to support our work. In doing so you will be helping to bring about a happier world with uplifting, life-enriching values for everyone.