Save Syria's Children – Mummascribbles

When the picture popped up in my newsfeed the other day of the Syrian toddler who was washed ashore alongside his brother, I cried. That photo has been haunting me ever since.

Alan (and yes that is the correct spelling of his name), was the same age as Zach. He was wearing the same kind of clothes as Zach does and the same kind of shoes. His cheeky smile says a thousand words like Zach’s does. The only thing different between my boy and Aylan was that mine wasn’t born into a war torn country. Alan was born into a country where violence and death are an everyday occurrence in huge proportions. Where families are so desperate to flee the terror and to try and make their children safe, that they are willing to put them at risk in order to try and get them somewhere safe. Somewhere that they can go to school and learn. Somewhere that they can play in a park or spend time at home without the risk of a shell landing on them.

While I was looking at the photo, reading the horrendous story, Zach was playing at nursery.

We don’t choose where we are born. As parents, it is our duty to the absolute best we can for our children and that is all these people are doing. I cannot imagine being so desperate that I would be willing to put my child’s life at risk. It is all I can do to prevent him from being hurt. How bad the situation must be in order to feel that this is the only way out. That paying money on what is just a dinghy in the middle of the seas is the only option.

We cannot see what is happening in Syria. All that we can see is the disaster that is happening with so many people dying trying to escape. Trying to better their lives, sometimes at a deadly cost.

If there is one thing, just one positive thing that has come out of this terrible situation, it’s that it has got people talking about it. People are realising that these people aren’t migrants. That not only are they quite simply refugees in a desperate plight but that they are people.

People like us. People who just want the best for their families. People who will go to the absolute ends to try and save their children.

That photo is still harrowing. It still makes me weepy if I think about it.

And yet it could have been me.

It could have been Zach.

It could have been any one of us had we have just been born somewhere different.

There’s lots that you could do from the comfort of your own home.

Please don’t turn a blind eye.

Web donations can be made at http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/emergencies/syria-appeal 

To find out more about what is happening in Syria, you can click here.