CONWAY — It’s been not quite a year since a small core of local people formed a “working group” to support a school for orphans in the Idlib province of the war-torn country of Syria. The support has grown and branched out from Conway into other Arkansas communities and across the country.
The steering committee, led by Jerry Adams and including Shelley Mehl, the Rev. Teri Dailey, Brett Hardison, Nancy Allen and Keith Jones, all of Conway, and Natalie Larrison of Little Rock, adopted the school in September 2016 and will hold a meeting Monday to update the community on the school’s progress in The Wisdom House Project. That meeting is set for 7-9 p.m. at UCA Downtown, 1105 Oak St. in Conway. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted for the project, which is supported through the 501(c) nonprofit, nongovernmental organization the Syrian Emergency Task Force, based in Washington, D.C.
Mouaz Moustafa, SETF executive director, will be the guest speaker. Both Moustafa and Larrison, SETF director of outreach, are graduates of Lakeside High School in Garland County and the University of Central Arkansas.
“We have received much support from our local community to support our five-year commitment to The Wisdom House [school],” Adams said.
“We want to use this meeting to provide information about the ongoing progress. Little by little, we are getting the word out about this school for orphans, which is located in a war zone. The province of Idlib is very near where that last bombing/chemical-weapons attack took place in April,” he said.
“This is really a holocaustic situation. What we are doing is a purely humanitarian effort to help these people … these children, who all have names and faces,” he said.
“We are already ahead of schedule on [donations for] our local funds. Initially, we hoped to raise $50,000, and we did that. That money has been used to purchase a bus, buy equipment and pay the salaries of five teachers and four staff members for one year,” Adams said.
“We have to get the money to Turkey, and someone from there takes it across the border to the city council in Idlib, who, in turn, pays the teachers and staff monthly,” he said. “It’s an involved process, and we have records of all of it.
“We budgeted $50,000 for the first year’s support. … We are ahead of schedule.”
Adams said the local effort in Conway has received support from the Conway School District through Superintendent Greg Murry; high school principal Jason Lawrence; high school social studies department chairman William Richardson, who is the faculty adviser for Model United Nations; and Carolyn Lewis Elementary School Principal Tina Antley and counselor Jamie Fisher, who supported a Letters of Hope for Syria campaign in their school.
Adams said local support has also come from First United Methodist Church in Conway, the Islamic Center of Little Rock, LISA Academy of Little Rock and the Lakeside
School District and from a group in Northampton, Massachusetts — The Valley Syrian Relief Committee.
Support has also come from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service through the recent participation on the Steering Committee of at least one student — Darlynton Adegor, who is a lawyer from Nigeria working on his Master of Public Service degree. Adegor is completing his International Public Service Project with the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
“Darlynton’s topic for his project and how he will contribute to SETF’s efforts is to develop a strategic plan for community engagement and collaborative partnerships with those interested in the alleviation of the suffering of the Syrian people,” Larrison said.
“We hope that our grassroots efforts in Arkansas to share the story of children like the students at The Wisdom House can bring communities across the state and the country to join our efforts in bringing awareness to the needs of suffering people in Syria,” she said.
Larrison said Idlib province is “one of the areas in Syria that is not under government control.
“SETF is trying to help these people govern themselves,. There is now a local council, and it is that group that is working with The Wisdom House.”
Larrison said the school just recently held its kindergarten graduation.
“There were 130 graduates,” she said, smiling. “I am in touch with the English teacher, and she expects 150 kindergarten students next year.
“Not only is the Conway group giving monetary support to this school; [the group] is giving emotional support as well,” Larrison said.
Adams said the local support group hopes to provide uniforms for the students.
“These uniforms would be made by the women — war widows, if you will — in Idlib. Maybe we can buy a sewing machine for them,” he said.
“So this effort will not only help the children; it will help the women of the community. We hope this might lead to some sort of cottage industry for these women,” he said.
“We want to make a difference in the lives of these people,” Adams said. “We now have a dialog with this community in this war-torn country. The war is not going away anytime soon. We can’t be naive about the situation. We know there has been genocide … mass killings … but there are people who are still living there.
“We have started a dialog between central Arkansas and the Idlib province, and we want to grow this support. We want the local communities to know that these people are real … not just ‘they.’”
Larrison said more information on The Wisdom House Project and how people can help can be found on the website www.thewisdomhouseproject.com.
More information will also be available at Monday’s meeting, including materials to write a Letter of Hope to The Wisdom House children in Syria.
For more information, contact Larrison at (501) 520-8522 or nlarrison@syriantaskforce.org.