Book Review: The Refugee Crisis: Through the Eyes of the Children

The Refugee Crisis

All proceeds, over production costs, 

are donated to IsraAID.

This is a fascinating book. All of us, in Canada, are proud to say that we've taken in something like 33,000 refugees from this crisis. It's not bad for a large country, with a harsh climate, and a smallish population (35 million).

In Canada, our foreign-born population is already at 20 per cent and growing!

It is a horrible situation overseas. We've had many fleeing the US, where asylum seekers are afraid of President #45.

Just this week, 19 people had to be rescued by Canadian authorities trying to cross the border in a frightful winter storm near Emerson, Man.

I feel badly for those countries, like Greece, who have taken so many into their arms.

Robin and Robert Jones have lived part-time on the beautiful island of Lesbos, Greece for 42 years. In 2015 Lesbos became a flashpoint for the refugee crisis sweeping Europe and Asia. In April 2015, fewer than 150 refugees a week were landing on the island. By November, 3,000 desperate people were pouring onto their beaches every day after having made the dangerous crossing of the Aegean Sea on overcrowded rubber rafts from Turkey.

You can tell a lot about children by their drawings!

Many find solace in art.

Yazidi refugee from Syria uses art to find peace in Winnipeg

This is Robin and Robert Jones' story, with amazing drawings by the children. They gave them paper and markers.

I loved studying my students' art.

In Numbers (LifelineSyria.ca)

• 4 out of 5 Syrian refugees are women and children
• Fewer than 1% of Syria’s refugees will ever get a chance to be resettled overseas
• More than 4.5 million Syrian refugees are in just 5 countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt
• More than 250,000 Syrians have died and more than 13.5 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria (more than half the country’s pre-war population)
• Nearly 5 million refugees fled Syria and at least 8 million are internally displaced
• Nearly 33,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada; of those, over 12,000 are privately sponsored

The Refugee Crisis - photo: Robin Jones

An article was written about them:

Heartbreak and Hope in Lesbos

Santa Barbara Couple on 

Front Lines of Refugee Crisis

Two refugees from Ghana were hospitalized in Winnipeg after getting frostbite while they were lost on Christmas Eve morning on Highway 75 near the Canada-U.S. border.

• 'They almost froze to death': Refugees frostbitten after walking to Manitoba border
• Number of asylum-seekers crossing illegally into Quebec from U.S. spikes

TRAIL OF FEARS: Thousands of refugees are streaming out of the war-torn Middle East and into Turkey, where they board flimsy dinghies and small wooden boats to reach Lesbos and the other Greek islands. From there, they travel north to European countries, seeking asylum. While Germany’s borders remain open, the Balkan states between it and Greece are rapidly shutting their gates, leaving migrants stranded.