When Darayya’s Free Women were forced to leave after the city collapsed under the pressure of the regime’s forces, they did not succumb to despair. On the contrary, they moved on quickly to find other places where they could utilize their important skills and experience. Soon after their exit, they started a support project for the children of martyrs and detainees of Darayya. They called it the Network of Guardians.
Exit from Darayya
About twenty of the women from the Darayya’s Free Women movement kept in constant contact after their forced exile from their hometown. They decided to respond to the shock of turning into refugees through active work. According to Hanan: “We thought we needed to continue to have some sort of an institutional backbone to our work, so we contacted the Syrian Nonviolent Movement (SNM). The SNM, which already had several projects for children in liberated areas, provided training for us on child protection.”
The collaboration between the SNM and the Darayya women bore fruit through several activities with children from different Syrian locales, including Idlib and Aleppo. The success of these initiatives pushed the two to decided to formalize their collaboration in the framework of a dedicated network for the protection and support of Syrian children. The name, Network of Guardians, was chosen to refer to the nature of the movement as a network of mutually-supportive groups.
Network of Guardians
The network is active across Syrian territory, but it focuses its work in “liberated areas in the countryside of Idlib, Aleppo and Damascus.” They also have access to the capital Damascus where they work in refugee centers under a cloak of secrecy for security reasons.
The network in unique in their focus on the legal side of child protection. They consider themselves as “protectors of the rights of Syrian children” and thus compile and send reports of their work and violations against Syrian children to “international organizations in the field of child rights.” They also have special trained staff that monitors other organizations’ use of children in their work. This has made the network an automatic target for attacks from the regime, but it has also brought on the wrath of other organizations where they’ve shed a light on their violations.
The network provides direct counselling to children, as well as training workshops for activists hoping to work with children. The network is also involved in supervising eight schools at the moment. “For example, we trained a group of activists working at a school in Aleppo’s countryside. The activists had established the school after it was abandoned by the regime. We trained the group on how to provide specialist care to children and how to follow up and document their progress,” according to Hanan. They also provided training to the mothers on how to deal with traumatized children and in cases of emergency.
Work methods
The network divides the support needed in their work with children to three levels: The first group are children who only need to be provided with their basic rights of security and education. The second group comprises children who were traumatized by the war and need active psychological support. The third group is made up of a few, but very difficult cases, suffering from serious psychological problems, where they are assigned therapists individually.
The network also works with children who are forced to work to support their families. In these cases, the network attempts to find funding bodies who may be able to help the child finish his/her education. Additionally, the network also looks into cases of domestic abuse of children where possible.
The network also has collaborative effort with the Grapes of My Country journal, where the two groups produce a biweekly children magazine, called Kite, and is distributed with the journal. According to Hanan, “the network is always looking for ways to collaborate with other civil society groups to deliver further support to children in this time of crisis.”
The activists of the Network of Guardians dream of a day when all Syrian children can enjoy their basic rights. They believe in planting the seeds for a “generation aspiring for peace, tolerance and forgiveness.”
