Dear friends,
Our commitment at Mission Enfance is clear: educating children means saving our world. In this Christmas period, your generosity is needed more than ever to provide educational and food aid to young people distraught by their bleak daily lives...
Since leaving his village in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, twelve-year-old Nazaret has been recovering from his suffering. During the Azeri blockade that began in December 2022, his hunger did not let him go, he saw his mother and sister die under the bombs, then it was the exodus by tractor with his grandmother and the bundle of his memories. With no hope of returning. Welcomed by a family from Gyumri in Armenia, Nazaret has to settle back into his uprooted life: school, friends, the town... Mission Enfance will bring him warm boots for Christmas to cope with temperatures of over -20° in winter, as well as school supplies to get him back to school.
In Kassab, in northern Syria, the villagers, descendants of the Armenians who fled the Turkish terror in 1915, live on the fringes of society. They received no help when the earthquake struck Syria in February 2023. Neglected by the world, these Armenian families are surviving in the ruins. We are offering them six months' survival food or enough to repair their homes. Over 500 Syrian families affected by the earthquake have received our support in person in recent months.
In their isolated village in the Syrian mountains, Maya and her friends can't believe their eyes. For the start of the new school year, we have completely renovated and equipped their primary school. They all walk more than two hours to get to class, as transport has become too expensive for their parents, especially when the average Syrian salary is USD 13...
In Iraqi Kurdistan, in the camps for displaced Yezidis, international humanitarian aid has virtually come to a halt. Thousands of displaced people and refugees are now trapped in these camps, with no hope of returning to their homeland, which is still in conflict. Our educational centres offer a real alternative to the canvas roofs under which families have been crammed for nearly ten years.
In Lebanon, in front of our school centre in Deir Al Ahmar, on the Bekaa plain, where 400 Lebanese and Syrian pupils are educated, the queue of Syrian refugee parents is getting longer to enrol their children. Hundreds of applicants are waiting. We have to train these exiled young people on Lebanese soil. We are constantly distributing emergency aid to needy families and financing their children's schooling. We are constantly responding to the basic needs of the Lebanese people.
Marie, Aminata, Emmanuel, Désiré and their companions are happy. They have received a beautiful school from Mission Enfance for the start of the new school year in the north of Burkina Faso. Pursued by the jihadists, our pupils have found refuge in the village of Filly with their families. We are building boreholes and drinking water wells to cultivate the land and avoid the camps for displaced people and their two million fugitives. These villagers are building their lives without being dependent on humanitarian aid.
Our educational actions on behalf of these children, survivors of blood but not of pain, are emblematic of our unceasing fight for their right to life, including in Colombia, Laos, Ethiopia... There can be no prospects for our planet, no relations between peoples, no peace as long as we accept that a billion of our planet's inhabitants are illiterate.
This Christmas, with Mission Enfance, make an educational contribution to the survival of humanity. Thank you for your support!
All the best.
Domitille Lagourgue,
Director of Mission Enfance
