After eight years of intense fighting, communities in Syria are re-emerging from the rubble. Tearfund’s Middle East Response Director, Kieren Barnes, recently travelled to Syria. He went to plan, with our partners, how best we can serve people as they look to the future.
Arriving in a bustling, busy and developed Damascus, it was hard to believe this was the same battered and broken Syria that we’ve grown used to seeing in the media. That is until we began travelling on the road out of the capital.
Huge parts of Damascus have been destroyed, and in the cities of Homs and Aleppo collapsed apartment blocks lie everywhere. There was no reassuring glow of street lights, no lights on in apartments. And yet, people are returning to these empty streets and crumbling buildings, determined to pick up the pieces of their lives.
