Children worldwide have sent over 1,000 portraits to Syrian children living in refugee camps in Jordan to express solidarity and shed light on their suffering.
Children from around the world have sent more than 1,000 hand-painted portraits to Syrian children in the Jordanian refugee camps Zaatari and Azraq this week.
Teachers, students worked on portraits for kids
The Memory Project invites art teachers and their students to create and donate portraits to youths around the world who have faced substantial challenges, such as violence, disasters, extreme poverty, neglect, and loss of parents, said the organization on its website.
''We want the portraits to help the children feel valued and important, to know that many people care about their well-being, and to act as meaningful pieces of personal history in the future." Memory Project founder Benjamin Schumaker said he decided to start the project back in 2004 after volunteering at a Guatemalan orphanage.
Global awareness
''I was only 22 and I did not know what I could do to make a difference in the lives of those children, but then, I had this powerful exchange'', Schumaker was quoted by the Jordan Times. ''It is the first time we deliver portraits to refugee children and we want to focus more on this'', the founder said when asked about the future of the project.
Most refugee children in Jordan suffer from poverty and lack of proper social structures with insufficient support from the international community, recent studies have said. Jordan says it has been working with the international community to improve conditions for children, including access to education and fighting child labor and abuse, but said lack of resources hampers progress.