Helping Hadija: Push to Get Schooling for Thousands of Syrian Refugee Children
Groups are working with Lebanon to get free public education for all.
— -- For children like 12-year-old Hadija, life in a refugee camp in Lebanon, just miles from the Syrian border, is the new normal.
The camp has been her family's home for the last four years. Hadija, whom ABC News met nearly a year ago, said that she loves her native Syria but that her family had to leave to escape the war.
Meet Hadija as she headed to the fields in 2014.
Once from middle-class families in Syria, some of these children, like Hadija, have been forced to support their families through back-breaking work. They spend up to seven hours a day filling sacks with potatoes.
UNICEF and its partners have been working, though, to get more refugee children enrolled in local public schools for free. This year, they seek to enroll 200,000 in Lebanon. They say their education-funding needs a total of $200 million, however.
UNICEF said $15 provide notebooks and pencils for a classroom of 28 children; $5.28 provide notebooks and pencils for 10 children; and $13 provide two story books.
There are more than 2 million out-of-school children in Syria, according to UNICEF, in addition to 700,000 Syrian refugee children in neighboring countries. Some Syrian children have lost up to five years of their education.
"There are currently more children on the move than before WWII,” said U.S. Fund for UNICEF President and CEO Caryl Stern. "In addition to donating to international humanitarian and refugee organizations, we are relying on the public to help us advocate for children by reaching out to their governments -- both domestically and internationally -- and asking them to take every action possible to put children first."
Click here to find out how you can help.
Hadija has been able to attend class, but she's currently out of school. Instead, she's been working in the fields to help support her family, earning $4 to $6 a day. She says that she wants to learn and that education is important.
She said her hope is to return to Syria and continue her education there.