Winter in a displacement camp arrives before the calendar says it should. The tents hold the cold rather than keep it out, and the children who sleep in them are the first to feel it. Our teams began the clothes distribution early for that reason: a coat handed out in November is a coat that was needed in October.
The campaign covered coats, jumpers, trousers and shoes, sized and sorted before the day rather than handed out from a pile. Families were registered in advance with the camp representatives, so that the households who missed the last distribution were served first and nobody queued for something that would not fit.
Not only a parcel
We asked the performers we support to come with us. They are artists whose own work stopped when the theatres and the studios did, and who now work in the camps — clowning, dabke, music. The clothes were handed out during the performance rather than before it, so the afternoon read as an afternoon out and not as an aid queue.
A child who is given a coat is warm. A child who is given a coat on a day they enjoyed is a child who had a day.
The same artists run our therapeutic recreation sessions through the rest of the year, which is why the children in these camps already knew them. That familiarity is the part that is hard to fund and easy to underestimate.
The campaign repeats every winter. If you would like the next one to reach more camps than the last, that is decided by what comes in before the cold does.
