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EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian crisis

"We were scared of drinking the water"

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We did not have hot water before, so they helped us have access to hot water and things are good now

Ibrahim* is 45 years old and he is from Deraa Dale, Syria. His home was bombarded and it was really tough for him and his family to make it out of the country. “We were internally displaced in Syria the first year of the war,” he says. He left his home country in November 2012 with his family and spent some time in a refugee camp in Jordan.

“We came here but it was the unknown for us… we did not know what to expect, but thankfully we adapted quickly, Jordanian people were welcoming. We are very similar, we have the same language, culture and tradition.”

Still, things are hard for Ibrahim and his family as work is really hard to come by. “I work with my son but not all the time. It depends on the demand… sometimes it’s once a month or more, so it depends, but in the winter, I haven’t worked for almost 3 months,” says Ibrahim.

After living in precarious conditions for many years, continuously having to change apartments, Ibrahim and his family have been staying in a house in Al Mazar, Irbid. “We have been living in this house for 2 years. Some people from Action Against Hunger came over to make an assessment, as our water tanks were leaking, rusty and damaged,” he explains. “We were scared of drinking the water so they changed the water tanks and installed taps and a water heater… we did not have hot water before, so they helped us have access to hot water and things are good now.” Before water tanks and taps were installed, Ibrahim’s family had to heat water on the stove.

Thanks to the financial support of the European Union via the EU Trust Fund, the WAAD consortium (ACTED, Action Against Hunger and Intersos), has been able to guarantee that families like Ibrahim’s have improved access to quality water and sanitation services. By rehabilitating and upgrading water and wastewater infrastructures and installing a new pumping station, more than 460,000 Syrian refugees and local communities in Lebanon and Jordan have access to clean water and sanitation, with all the linked positive consequences on health and hygiene.

“Even after 9 years of war and the fact that there is no solution on the horizon, we still hope that things will get better and that is the only thing that keeps us going,” he says. “Syrians are well liked among Jordanians… […] We do have a social life here. We are friends with Jordanians, we made friends.”

*The beneficiary’s real identity has been kept anonymous.