New Opportunities

Hello,

Today I found out that I have an awesome opportunity to teach English to children of refugees. I will go every Saturday to the children and help them practice their English. I'm really excited to be able to hook up with an organization that will let me help people, especially children. It will be a great experience to see how people live in the camps as well. I am sure it is much much more terrible than I can even image. This experience will allow me to better understand the struggles of refugees. 

Every Saturday, I will meet up with students and people running the program and travel with them by bus to Beqa'a refugee camp. This is one of the six emergency refugee camps that were set up by international organizations in 1968 to help house and support the Palestinian refugees flooding into Jordan during the Arab Israeli War. 

Beqa'a refugee camp is the largest camp in Jordan and is 20Km north of Amman. UNRAW(United Nations Relief and Works Agency) runs the camp and has set up 8,000 house like structures where people can live. At this camp, there are more than 104,000 registered refugees. The organizations that can be found at the camp are sixteen schools, a women's center, two health care centers and a rehabilitation center. Most of the people in the camp are between the ages of 16-25. In this camp, the major problems appear to be a lack of education and a lack of proper housing. 

The camp has classes six days a week in order to help the children learn English. I will be working with kids from the age of 4 to about 13 years old. I will be helping for two sessions, each two hours long. 

While I am excited for this experience and opportunity, I would be crazy if I did not admit that I was nervous as well. I will be in a totally different world than I am used to. People will have real problems that I will not be able to assist with or mentalyl handle myself. However, I really want to help these children and I feel like the gains outweigh the nervousness. 

Talk to you soon, 

Natalie