About 60 percent of the world's refugees are coming from five countries: Syria (4.2 million), Afghanistan (2.6 million), Somalia (1.1 million), Sudan (744,000), and South Sudan (641,000). Syria's civil war has created a refugee crisis that has gradually gotten worse and worse. While there are a multitude of complex reasons for ther efugee crisis, the Syrian civil war is certainly a big one. However, our focus should be on why refugees aren't able to have their basic needs met, and what it is we can do in order to fix this issue. A lot of the time refugees are forced to live in camps after leaving their homes, and these places are often overcrowded, with little resources.
My NYU London community has made efforts to help this community by conducting a food drive for Care4calais, and by taking a group of students to Calais with the Help Refugees Charity. London also has various other organizations that offer help to refugees. Even so, it is rather easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. Sometimes I feel like donating a few cans of food isn't enough. Even so, I try to remain positive by thinking about the power of collective action. If everyone thought that donating food would not actually do much good, then no one would donate food and so many people would go hungry. Therefore, we should all try to do our part no matter how small it may seem in the grand scope of things.
