Refugee Family Crisis

Hello. We are a family from Portland, Oregon, hoping to help out a Syrian refugee family that has been resettled here. These lovely people have encountered and overcome unfathomable burdens, only to experience multiple medical traumas that have made their lives even more uncertain.

They very much need some extra financial help to cover urgent medical and living expenses until they can work again. Funds will be directly withdrawn from the gofundme account by the recipient family.

I am in regular and direct communication with them. They are friends, and we communicate via text message, emails, and in person. Funds will be spent on rent, urgent medical expenses, and costs for the newborn baby. 

They are ambitious, educated and talented people, with much to offer, but are facing difficulties never imagined when they made the arduous journey to Oregon - a safe place to call home. 

In Syria she was an engineer who designed kitchens, furniture and public works projects.  He was a foreman of construction and building projects.  They had just started their own design/build firm when the Syrian civil war started.

Their dream is to start a small business here, like so many migrants before them. If this campaign can help with that, then we will all benefit from it.

They aspire to be fully contributing members of our community, and have come so far from the trauma of the Syrian war, but fate has brought them unforseen challenges.

Here, in their words, is their story:

First I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for visiting our Go Fund Me page. We are a family of four (I delivered a new baby girl on July 7th), from Damascus, Syria. We have endured a long ordeal, moving from place to place, since leaving our country because of the war. Finally, about a year ago, we were granted admittance to the United States. We feel so lucky to be here.

Unfortunately, after being here for a few short months, in December my husband had a serious injury - he lost two fingers from his left hand, and lost most of his thumb. He has been unable to move his hand, which has affected his entire arm, leaving it weak and painful.

He is a very good carpenter, cabinet maker and wood worker, and he had hoped to find a career in this field, but with this injury he has been completely unable to work. We hope to have another surgery to try to restore his thumb, which we plan to get after the baby is born, so that he can work again.

But then we learned more bad news, and our situation has become more urgent. Doctors have found a lump in my husband's brain. We have a surgery scheduled to remove the lump. We do not know what is wrong or why this lump formed.

With the new baby I and this new problem with my husband's health I do not know how we will support ourselves. The accident has placed us in a position where we are barely surviving financially.  Many of the generous programs which assisted us when we arrived are ending, and yet our situation is much worse than it was a year ago.

We hope this Go Fund Me campaign will help bring stability to our current situation. We need help to pay our living and medical expenses now and for the new baby while my husband has his surgery, and while he recovers. We hope with these funds we can also provide for a prosthetic fingers for my husband’s hand, so that he may work again.

When someone like my husband, who has so much ambition and so much to offer, gets hurt so badly … it has been hard to recover from that. We just hope to get on our feet again.

I will leave it to your heart and your generosity. And please pray for us.

Thank you again for taking time to read our story.