mrissa | In a good cause: choices for Aleppo

Some of the most annoying words in the language are, “You know what you should have done….” Or, “You should just….” “Just.” There are some situations where “only” and “just” should be stricken from the conversation.

The crisis in Syria is on that list. The people who are on the ground there know what factors they have to deal with–their health, their resources, people who cannot be abandoned and need care–and the last thing they need is for me to sit here comfortably in my non-threatened home and tell them how things would be fine if only they’d chosen what I imagine I would choose.

Which is one reason I like the Karam Foundation’s Emergency Aid for Children of Syria. They have options to support the families who are leaving Syria as refugees and options to support the families who are staying under the airstrikes, where schools and hospitals are getting hit as well as homes and other institutions. Individuals and families don’t all have to make the same choice–they don’t all have the same choices. Stay or go, the situation is grim, and they need help.

The International Rescue Committee is also providing aid, and they give some really grim statistics about who has gotten out, who is still trying to, where the funds are. I just found out this morning that there is a friend-of-a-friend connection to this organization, and it looks like they do really good work.

One of the strangely hard things about writing these charity posts is that lecturing you about how bad things are is not my goal, and yet holy crud are they bad. This has all been understated, but it has to be; the situation is hard to overstate. So I’m choosing to focus on the organizations as much as I can: here, here’s a good bit, here’s a thing that will make a difference for somebody. It’s what I’ve got right now.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux