MEET DIMA

“Before the war in Syria, life was decent although we were not living in luxury. My husband was a painter, and I was a housewife. When the war started we witnessed very scary things: kidnappings, fighting, airplanes flying over and dropping bombs. Someone even tried to kidnap our eldest daughter Dima. She was only eight at the time. A man came from nowhere, carried her, and started running away. He tried putting her in a car but thank God, I had time to stop it from taking her away.  That was terrifying. I had nightmares for a long time after this. My daughter would wake me up and tell me everything was OK. But it was not. It took me four years to heal from this trauma.

My four children and I have been in Lebanon for six years now.  It was very difficult at first. Even though there are of course good people, some others  did not make us feel welcome here. For two years I could not put my children to school, they had to stay at home with me all day. Before I could enroll Dima in the MERATH partner education center, she used to beg me to bring  her a home teacher but I could not pay for one. We used to fight about this!

She has now been in the center for a year, and the quality of the education there turned out to be great, much better than other schools! It is more than just academics : there is an extra care in this center. The teachers encourage the kids to give their best and study always more.

Now Dima seems to better cope with our difficult situation in Lebanon and she has many dreams : she wants to travel abroad and study. I really hope she can pursue those dreams. This is why we are really hesitant to go back to Syria, where her dad’s family wants to marry her to one of her cousins.

I am very thankful for the people who support this center and I want to encourage them to support even more because there are still many children who do not have access to any kind of education.”

This is the first school that I love that much. If we do something wrong, the teachers don’t just shout at us : they sit and talk with us and take time to clarify what is wrong and how to fix it. I wrote this letter for the teachers to thank them, because I deeply love them and I was sad the school was closing for the summer!

>Read Dima’s beautiful letter to her teachers

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