Just in time for International Women’s Day 2021, we started a new cooperation with our partner organization Zeltschule e.V. to support refugee girls and young women from Syria. As part of the IndePENdent-Girl program, we extend our support for all girls from our Phoenix School after their graduation – giving them a much-needed perspective for the future.

With the recently launched INVICTA campaign, Zeltschule e.V. wants to draw special attention to the problems of refugee girls and women and improve their situation. Of course, we were very enthusiastic about this initiative and decided to chime in and give all girls of the Phoenix School the opportunity to go to a secondary school or to do a training program after their compulsory school years – which, according to the Syrian curriculum, end around the age of 14. The job trainings are mainly carried out within the tent schools, in the many different businesses that have since been set up in the camps.

In concrete terms, of the 65 girls who about to finish school at the Phoenix camp

• 32 girls will go to secondary schools
• 10 girls will be trained in our tent school Women’s Workshops
• 15 girls will apprentice in our bakery, soup kitchen and with the nurses and midwives of the women’s clinic
• 8 girls will be trained within our construction and maintenance group.

The girls are picked up every day by a “school bus” that takes them to the secondary private school, to the bakery, to the soup kitchen, to the camel camp for the women’s consultation or to the camp where a new school is being built or something needs to be repaired.

Although the distances are often not far, it is too dangerous for the girls to walk outside the camps by themselves. The rape of a Syrian refugee girl has no consequences for the perpetrators. We need to ensure that all girls are protected, get to school and back to the camps safely.

Refugee girls and young women suffer particular hardship. After finishing school, they are almost always faced with the choice between a marriage or field work. Yet all they wish for is an independent, fulfilled and peaceful life – just like the rest of us.

“Sometimes we are sitting in class and someone tells something funny and we all laugh out loud. Then, for a moment, it’s as if everything is normal, as if we are school children like anywhere else in the world, who can become anything and do anything,” says Qamar from the Phoenix School.

Support for a girl costs an average of 96 € a year. Help us to give these strong, intelligent and inspiring girls an invincible (“invicta”) perspective on life and to create a better future in solidarity with them.