"If the drawings of Syrian children don’t shake the world’s conscience then nothing will." These are the words of Syrian artist Abdel Karim al-Hasan, promoter of the "Buds of Freedom" initiative, that aims to steer and protect vulnerable children from the bloody battlefield. By letting their works tell the story of their sufferings, al-Hasan and his fellow activists, hope to help the children become the seeds of Syria’s democratic future.

Since the very beginning of the Syrian uprising, it became apparent that children will bear the biggest burden of the violence. They had to bare witness to the most heinous crimes against their families and loved ones, and the lucky amongst them were those able to flee to a neighboring country as refugees. Children were the first victim’s of the regime’s systematic policies of terror, and there was an urgent need to find ways to shelter them from this.

“I wanted to help them express their harsh realities and the terror they went through instead of repressing them.” This is why Syrian artist Abdel Karim al-Hasan decided to open an atelier dedicated to the refugee children. “And then I would give them papers and crayons to put their imagination into drawings,” he added. And eventually to collectively think of a brighter future where nature, with its brilliant scapes, can take the place of these images of terror. Through the hard work of one person, this project did eventually come to life, and soon enough beautiful images of landscapes and bright rays of sun took the place of the macabre in the children’s drawings.

The regime’s oppressive machinery, however, finally forced al-Hasan into exile in Amman, Jordan in October 2011. Nevertheless, from there he restarted his work and organized several workshops culminating in the first festival of the Buds of Freedom, which gathered more than seventy children. The drawings from these workshops were sent to many embassies as an indictment of the regime’s barbarity and brutality. These efforts, alongside his persistent advocacy of the children’s tragedy in the media, brought under more pressure from the regime and he had to leave Amman in July 2012 to Cairo, Egypt.

In Egypt he was able to organize several workshops in public squares and parks. He also organized several exhibitions in Tahrir Square, 6 October city and the Cultural Center for Children and Syndicates. These efforts led to the second festival of the Buds of Freedom. The festival, held in the Culture Wheel center in Cairo on June 21, 2013, ran under the subtitle: “Syria in the eyes of her children, a witness to the savagery of the regime.”

Al-Hasan, now back in Amman again, is preparing for the third installation of the festival. His time is spent between shelters and children centers, where he meets many of the most traumatised children. After several workshops with them, he organizes recreational activities including drawing, theatre, music and games, in an effort to slowly paint over their memories of the terror. The artist insists that the messages in these collective exhibitions are not his but are the “messages of the children who escaped the Assad inferno, to the misery of exile. It is a message in a language that the whole world understands: that of the child.” He believes his main mission was successful in that he was able to deliver these children from the purgatory of war. Whether his overall effort in exposing the tyrant to world is successful or not, will be in the hands of the Arab and international community.

Al-Hasan, who has received no financial support for his projects, says that his worst moments were when he “met children and couldn’t provide with the crayons and drawing pads they needed.” The artist has even resorted to working overtime in cafes and restaurants to be able to finance his monthly meeting with the children. To him, these children are the “future of Syria. And the downfall of this dictatorship must come hand in hand with building this future.”

His message to both the loyalists and opposition camps is: “You must know that our future is living now in a tent awaiting its slow death. Try to find a solution, for the future of our country is slowly dying over the borders.”