Aleppo, Syria: updates from A name and a future
In Aleppo, Syria, A name and a future is the project that Pro Terra Sancta has set up together with Binan Kayyali, PhD in psychology, for the assistance to women and children traumatized by the clashes that have paralyzed the city.
Manal talks about it, a woman assisted by the project, who tells what A Name and a Future has done for her. Here’s her story
Aleppo during the ‘Syrian war’
The history of the war in Syria has led some of the actors of the conflict (radicalized Islamists, government troops, international coalitions …) to confront each other in the Aleppo area between 2011 and 2017. The city, in the North-West of Syria, was heavily bombed several times, especially in its eastern districts. The city, in the North-West of Syria, was heavily bombed several times, especially in its eastern districts.
In East Aleppo, as everyone knows, entire buildings have been razed, streets gutted, basic services canceled. Schools, houses, places of worship, shops, everything has been eradicated by the fury of grenades and bombs. Many of which remained unexploded, alert and silent in the depths of the ground.
How did the project “A Name and a Future” start
In a war-torn East Aleppo that PhD Binan Kayyali, together with Father Firas Lutfi OFM, decided to set up, precisely in 2017 (when the war in Syria was beginning a new phase, far from the ‘Paris of the Middle Oriente ‘as Aleppo was called), the project A name and a future.
Among the broken and torn streets, among the dilapidated buildings, Dr. Binan found the traces of a tenacious life, which, torn and battered, resisted, a little incredulous, to violence. Girls and children, often victims of rape by occupation troops, wandered among the rubbleorphaned from birth, deprived of everything. No one had ever even called them by name.
Next to them, the women, deprived of the war of affections, deprived of the society of a future, forcibly forced into pregnancies that have made them suspicious several times, begged for a light and a hope.
Manal’s witness
The project A name and a future, in Aleppo was designed for them.
After five years of activity, we are reaping the fruits of the initiative with both hands. Manal talks about it: discover her testimony below in the video. Manal talks about it: discover below, in the video, his testimony.
The project A name and a future
The Project of A Name and a Future is part of the initiative, structured by Pro Terra Sancta together with Dr. Binan Kayyali, of the Franciscan Care Center (FCC), which coordinates three locations in the city of Aleppo. The initiative is aimed at the most fragile sections of the population in war-torn Aleppo: first of all women and children.
To women,who are often forced at home without a proper education (as Manal recounts in his video interview above), literacy courses are guaranteed,which can make them independent and confident. A name and a future is therefore an initiative in pink: a women’s project, which has a particular attention to the revival and promotion of women’s rights in Syria, a place where attention on this sector is decidedly lacking.
To children, deprived of everything, and without even a name, we offer within the project paths to learn to live, to hope and to love. First of all we offer them registry services, which are able to tell the boys who they are. And then, thanks to the intervention of teams of specialized psychologists, we have activated psychological support paths. These, through art, are able to work on the traumatic experiences that many of the little ones carry with them, and, with sweetness, to dissolve them. A new hope is rooted here, towards a new tomorrow. A tomorrow that is, for these girls and boys, a place in which to rediscover, in Aleppo, to have a name and a future.