The drawings and paintings by children aged 10 to16 came out of an art therapy workshop conducted for Syrian child refugees at the Bader Medical Centre in Jordan, a project partly sponsored by Spanish NGO Global Humanitaria.
The aim of the “Little Hopes” exhibition is to raise money for treatment for the young artists, who are recovering from traumas ranging from amputations to loss of relatives or friends.
“This exhibition started in Madrid in December and it will go all around Spain to raise money for this cause until all the paintings are sold,” Javier Gil, the press officer of Global Humanitaria, told Rudaw English.
In Barcelona, 44 paintings were on display this month at the city’s Casa Elizalde.
“We started one year ago in Jordan to see what we could do to help,” Elisabet Abasolo, director of cooperation at Global Humanitaria, told Rudaw English.
“Although we are helping finance health issues of the children, we want later on to help in educating them,” she said.
Children draw what they see and experience. Hence, many of the works are depictions of despair, or the terror the children have experienced.
The paintings come with captions written by the children.
“For war… for immigration… for death,” says a caption that goes with a child’s simple portrait of people drowning at sea.
Under the grim drawing of a destroyed school a child artist writes: “The destruction cannot stop my knowledge. Education is my future.”
And the caption with a moving painting of two hands that come out of a jail cell to caress a girl’s dark tresses explains: “I miss my papa’s fingers braiding my hair.”
But there are also portrayals of hope.
A boy lies in a flower garden, with the caption: “goodbye pain, goodbye; welcome hope.”
A girl draws herself in a school graduation gown: “Graduation: a dream realized.”
Global Humanitaria has identified 1,200 boys and girls in Jordan who need medical help to recover from injuries, amputations and post-traumatic situations.
Abasolo explained that the children live in refugee camps and in northern Jordan with their families.
Apart from raising money for the kids, the NGO brought to Spain a 14 year old child named Wissam who recently underwent an operation in a hospital in Madrid. He now has a new silicone prosthesis for his leg.
“This is the first time that a Syrian refugee has an operation in Spain,” explained Gil, whose NGO is planning to do the same with other Syrian children.
Although the Spanish government has not been very welcoming in taking in large numbers of refugees from Syria and Iraq, recently a Kurdish Iraqi family of asylum seekers was settled in the city of Zaragoza.
The family of four children and their parents is part of a group of 20 Syrians and Iraqis who arrived in Madrid from Greece, and who have been resettled in different cities around Spain.
In June, Spain will resettle 586 asylum seekers who are now in Greece, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey, in the framework of a European program of settlement created to deal with the European refugee crisis. Spain has agreed to take in 16,000 refugees between 2016 and 2017.
The awareness about the refugee crisis is naturally being discussed by youngsters and in schools around Spain.
Like the “Little Hopes” project, institutions and schools have stepped forward to lend a hand – however small – to offer help in a crisis that has made millions homeless in Syria and Iraq – nearly half of them children.
“After a visit from a volunteer worker to our school, a group of students were inspired to get involved with the refugee crisis,” explained Marta Vernet, head of community service and activities at the American School of Barcelona.
The school is taking part in the “Lifejacket Project,” a collaboration with other European international schools in which lifejackets abandoned on the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos by refugees were brought to schools and artistically decorated to become part of an exhibition.
“Every lifejacket,” she said, “represents the strength, courage and hope of a new life.”
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A limited number of works from the Little Hopes exhibition are available for sale through Global Humanitaria’s website: https://www.globalhumanitaria.org/tienda
