On a winter’s day in Toronto, a group of young people walked from one street to another looking for volunteers to be filmed singing Roar by Katy Perry. This was part of a YouTube campaign to raise money to help Syrian kids struggling in freezing conditions.
The mission was not easy, the group told me, as many people walked away and did not sing because either they were busy or it was too cold outside. But they insisted on getting enough people to sing the song before sunset. By the end of the day, the group donated $10 (Dh36.7) on behalf of each participant; a total of $330 went to Karam Foundation that will deliver winter clothes to refugee camps.
But that is only a start. “Like For Syria”, a group of young men and women who use creative ways to raise awareness about the crisis at home, is hoping to inspire more people to follow in their footsteps.
Last year, the group was involved in other popular YouTube campaigns, including “Shave a Mustache, Keep a Syrian Child Warm” by Karam Foundation, which raised over $100,000 in one week. Their campaign on Razoo.com was the top campaign on the website and as a result they won a $25,000 prize to add to the donations they raised. They are expecting to achieve the same results after posting “Toronto Sings for Syria” on YouTube.
“We wanted to convince people to donate for Syrian children but in a fun way. We were the first people to come out with this idea,” said Saif Shawaf, a Syrian-Canadian and a third-year business student at McMaster University, who worked with the group to make it happen.
I asked him about the reason they have chosen Roar. He said the song has a deep meaning and many messages that relate to how Syrians feel today. He said: “Roar is a song about hope and how people can collectively be more powerful than anything in their way. ‘Cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar, louder than a lion’.”
His brother Faris is the co-founder of “Like For Syria” and a postgraduate student of technology entrepreneurship and innovation at McMaster University. He said that by choosing a mainstream song, they thought they could reach a wider audience who would enjoy it and be involved in the cause.
“We were all inspired by the Syrian revolution. We organised protests and tried to raise awareness in many ways. Then we quickly realised the power of YouTube. Social media is the best way to reach a wide audience when you don’t have much of a budget,” he said with a smile.
I personally think this is inspiring. This group of young people are doing the best they can to help the Syrian people living in tents whose exposure to the cold is significant and can be unbearable. Among them are more than 436,000 children under the age of five, according to Unicef.
Such individual efforts can mean far more than one can imagine for these children. In August, Unicef announced that at least 100,000 Syrian children in Lebanon alone are in desperate need of warm winter clothing. During winter, temperatures in Syria and neighbouring countries can fall to -17˚C and below; winter storms with heavy snow are common, and can have serious health consequences on children. Add to that their physical stress coming from their harsh experiences during the conflict and the shortage of food aid, schooling, clean water.
“I do this because I choose to care, I choose to take action. I don’t think any child deserves to freeze to death and it really upsets me when it happens because it’s easily preventable. Just US$20 can keep a child warm, that’s a movie ticket and some popcorn that I could live without,” Saif Shawaf told me with a clear enthusiasm.
There are many people who choose to take action, sometimes by visiting refugees personally. The “Breathing Numbers”, founded by a 35-year-old Emirati woman is one example. The charity group – now involving 21 people – provided medical aid and winter clothes and blankets to children in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, home of about 130,000 refugees and the place where four children reportedly died last winter. I also know or heard of many other individual efforts to collect money and winter clothing for the Syrian refugee children.
Now more than any other time of the year, the Syrian people need all the help and support they can get. Through the power of individual acts, every person has the potential to play a meaningful role in easing the suffering of those children and help them find warmth in the harsh cold of winter.
The video Toronto Sings for Syria went viral with more than 40,000 views in just a few days. Hopefully, many more people will be motivated to take action, to donate and get contributions from others and support refugees in any way possible. As "Like For Syria" members said at the end of the video: "We might not be able to save everyone, but each of us can save a life."
Let’s take action.
aalmazrouei@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @AyeshaAlmazroui
