By Amy Patrick
Back in April I was lucky enough to participate in a site visit to the Collateral Repair Project (CRP) in Amman, Jordan, with 22 other American ladies from the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO). The FAWCO Foundation’s current two-year Target Project, called Hope Beyond Displacement, is providing funds directly to CRP, a grass roots effort to bring much-needed assistance to refugees - those commonly referred to as ‘collateral damage.’ Our mission was to see the programmes we are funding and bear witness to the stories of the refugees served. Two other American ladies from FAWCO Region 1 – currently living in Edinburgh and Dublin – met me at Heathrow (after the long drive down from my home near Birmingham) to board the flight to Amman. We weren’t fully prepared for what we would see and hear.
According to UNHCR, Jordan hosts the second-largest refugee population in the world and about 80% of the refugees live outside of UN-funded camps. They are called ‘urban refugees’ and this population in Amman consists mainly of those who have fled Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan. With few exceptions, refugees are not legally allowed to work in Jordan. For these people, CRP extends lifelines such as food vouchers, English classes, children’s programmes, skills training, trauma relief and women’s empowerment.
Amanda Lane, Executive Director of CRP and American expat, told me about the refugee population in Jordan and how CRP has been able to build community services to help them in Amman:
“Less than 1% of the people that apply... get resettled. It’s interesting because when I go to Europe, people are like, ‘Yes, we have some refugees here.’ Actually, you really don’t. In Jordan, one in every ten people is a refugee and Lebanon one in every four. Yes, the reality is the vast majority of refugees are here in these primary host countries...It’s actually much more cost-effective to help people here because the vast majority of them are going to be staying here”.
“What has changed in the past five years is that we’ve really been consistently growing. Whereas we were feeding about 15 families right now, in the past month we fed over 400 families. We have a lot more self-care and wellness programming that fits into helping people to heal from trauma. We have a computer lab and lots of computer classes. We also have an after-school club for kids that takes place every day”.
Amanda lives in Amman with her Jordanian husband, Samer, and their two children. Her story began the same way as many Americans living in Britain: she met a man from another country, fell in love, got married, had kids, and in her words, ‘got sidetracked.’
“We were living in Seattle for about six years, and then we decided to come back [to Jordan]. It was actually me who pulled us back more than my husband because I really wanted my kids to feel like they could relate to half of their heritage, or to be able to relate to being Arab, and to be able to learn Arabic as well”.
I asked Amanda about the challenges of Lunch at CRP - Collateral Repair Project being an American living in Jordan and raising children abroad. I explained that I know many expat women in Britain who feel that they are trying to raise children between two different countries. She said:
“I don’t feel I’m raising them between countries much anymore. I think they’re comfortable wherever. I don’t feel like it’s a challenge. We certainly live, like many expat families, in a weird middle place. It’s really weird to me because I grew up in southern Ohio and never left, until I was out of college, really”.
Expats Jason and Judy Wilson knew Amanda and her husband and jumped at the chance to move to Amman to work for CRP. Jason is now the Director of Data and Marketing at CRP and Judy is the Director of Grants and Communications. Jason explained how they got back to Jordan, a country they had fallen in love with during previous travels:
“Amanda was in town, she came to Seattle for a [CRP] fund-raising trip and she met up with us just to say ‘hi’ and have some coffee, and that’s when she asked, ‘Do you want to come help with this?’ We had said if we had ever had the opportunity to live in Amman, we should do it and then, this opportunity to come and use our talents to help these people appeared... I’ve never worked harder, been paid less or been happier in my entire life!”. Jason left his job as a data analyst to help modernise processes at CRP. He explained:
“Our challenge is we’re trying to do a lot, we’re trying to keep track of everything that we’re doing, and understand it, build out a measurement and evaluation practice, build out a better way to track people who are receiving our food vouchers, and our programmes. A couple of years ago, this was literally all being done on paper. What I’ve been trying to do is put together a technology stack using software that is available. I’m still working on a way to develop a pipeline of interns or volunteers who have the hard skills that we really need for this”.
The site visit to CRP was the first of its kind to support FAWCO’s Target Project programme. FAWCO’s funding is specifically used for the SuperGirls after school programme, women’s vocational training, the Women’s Empowerment 101 programme, and a men’s gender-based violence prevention course. We learned so much more about why grassroots programmes are vital by being on the ground in Jordan than we ever would by watching news reports or documentaries. We knew there would be heartbreaking stories shared, but there was no preparation to keep the tears from flowing as we were told of one impossible, horrific personal experience after another. We had no idea that so many of the refugees had stopped living their lives completely, i.e. not working, not sending their children to school, etc., or that they feel just as hopeless now as they did when they made the decision to flee dangerous conflict zones.
During our visit, one of the beneficiaries, Sara*, had asked to share her story with us. After explaining that she and her family had left the ‘hell’ of one of the largest refugee camps in the world, without any national identity papers for herself or her family, she became too upset to finish her story. Jason Wilson, Director of Data and Marketing at CRP, later filled in the gaps during our interview:
[Sara’s father] is from Syria and he was involved very early on when the [Arab Spring] protests began. He’s a lawyer and he advocated for the young men who had been charged. As a result of his defense of these young men, his family was targeted by the regime. They were attacked.
His young daughter [Sara’s younger sister] was alone in the home and they dropped a bomb on his house. His daughter was grievously injured, they ended up having to flee in the night. They went to a hospital. Many of the hospitals wouldn’t take them in, because the government was searching for their family. They finally found a hospital to help stabilise the daughter and then, in the middle of the night, someone from the hospital came and said, ‘They’re here. They’re looking for you. You need to go.’
His daughter was in a coma, he put her over his shoulder and they ended up crossing from Syria into Jordan, being pursued. When Amanda and CRP ended up finding them, they were living under a bridge in winter with no proper clothing and they had no options. Their daughter was still unconscious. CRP was able to find some medical help and support for them. The daughter lived and they really started to build their life here.
Sara’s parents and sister now live in the UK. Sara, her husband and two young children hope to be allowed to join them one day.
*Name has been changed.
Many of us who are members of FAWCO-affiliated American Women’s Clubs in the UK are happy to fundraise for local British charities, but we sometimes lose sight of the work FAWCO is doing in the name of American women all over the world. The programmes and assistance offered by CRP helps refugees to start living again by building a community on shared experiences that transcends race, religion or political leanings. The beneficiaries of these programmes were excited to share their progress with us and stressed how they have found dignity again by helping others at the centre. They want people in the UK and all over the world to know what has happened to them and what challenges they continue to face. They were incredibly welcoming, resilient women who were happy to cook their favourite dishes and share them with us. Every expat knows how comforting tastes of home can be!
Read more about the Collateral Repair Project at www.collateralrepairproject.org and about FAWCO’s Target Project Hope Beyond Displacement here. See even more about Amy’s visit to CRP at iceberglife.net/asia/jordan.