Firefly, IMET2000 and ACT international are running a six-month pilot in Gaza treating children suffering from PTSD. ACT International trains counsellors in accelerated trauma therapy (CATT) and the two counsellors in Gaza – Mohammed El Sharef and Haitham Mohammed have been trained by ACT and are receiving ongoing training and...
Maria Chambers, Projects Coordinator, Antakya June 2019: We would like to thank the Hadrian wall walkers for their energy and enthusiasm raising the funds that have supported these programmes: without their hard work and generosity of their sponsors these children would not have access to these activities. The summer holiday...
Emily Keen, a young professional documentary maker, volunteered to travel to Bosnia and make this film for us this summer. She has captured the importance of Svitac’s work in Bosnia brilliantly and why we need to continue to support and enable this work to continue in these difficult times.
The education centre in Antakya has seen some exciting progress in the last few months. Thanks to the staff developing strong and effective education programmes, more children have been attending courses and re-engaging with education. The recently introduced online teacher training courses mean that the summer programme reached over 800...
Our partner in Bosnia, Svitac hosted a group of participants from the World Life Experience project between April 9-19th. World Life Experience takes 11 people around the world for 1 year: travelling, discovering, interacting and working with local people and organisations. We are very grateful to the World Life Experience team...
Firefly Syria’s students have had many years of interrupted, or simply no education, due to the war. As a result it is commonplace for Syrian refugee children to be at a learning level three or four years behind their age group, and many are even illiterate. Yet, they have high...
Firefly Syria is a refugee led initiative which owes its success to the personal stories, struggles and resilience of the people it is made up of. The Story of Um S and her family Um S is employed at the Firefly centre in Antakya as a cleaner. Um S has...
Over the last four months, local refugee staff at our centre in Antakya have been looking for ways to outreach other teachers inside Syria. We are now thrilled to announce the success of their wonderful initiative. Our local refugee staff have designed a teacher online training programme and a fifty-two page...
Our projects coordinator – Maria Chambers – visited our centre in Antakya this October, bringing back great news! “It was just so wonderful to see the way the Applied science programme has developed. Top quality resources have been made at the centre that support the curriculum developed by our staff. They...
We identified a need to focus on offering opportunities for teenage girls to get back into a learning environment. To attract teenage girls to our educational centre, we designed a programme that would give them an opportunity to engage with an entrepreneurial activity and further education at the same time....
Please click here to read the Firefly for Syria 2017 Annual Report detailing the impact of our work with Syrian refugees in Antakya, Turkey. Arabic speakers can follow the latest project news from Antakya via our centre’s Facebook page.
Maria (our project coordinator) has recently spent some days at our Education Centre for Syrian Refugees in Antakya. She shares with us her experience: “It was so encouraging to see two strands of the curriculum developing so positively during my recent visit to Antakya. The children were busy learning Science...
Ethnic and political divisions in Bosnia are far from being resolved. But, with our help, new generations can achieve the unachievable. Thanks to its multi-ethnic youth arts and education projects, our partner Svitac plays a crucial role in promoting community cohesion and defeating conflict narratives in the ethnically diverse city of Brčko...
Maria (our project coordinator) organised a second visit to the centre in September-October 2016. From an online meeting during her visit, she could not wait to share with us her positive feedback: “It is wonderful to be back here and see the progress that the children have made here during...
Our Project Coordinator, Maria Chambers, visited the Antakya Centre (Turkey) in May 2016 to help our local partner going through the initial setting up phase. She came back with great news, and a very positive feeling: “On the way to work there was a little boy sitting on the pavement...
