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Rasha and her family are refugees. They fled the fighting in Syria eight months ago and now live in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon close to the Syrian border.

Rasha says her family were lucky to get out of Syria alive.  There was constant and heavy fighting in her town. Bullets were fired into their home. “One of them passed by my child’s head,” she says. The family were so scared that their home would be bombed, they slept under the trees outside it.

Keeping a roof over their heads

In an attempt to protect her family, Rasha convinced her husband and eldest son to move to another town in Syria to try to find work and she brought her two daughters and three youngest sons to Lebanon.

But like Amalia, Rasha and her family have survived the war only to face a whole new set of difficulties in Lebanon. For Rasha life as a refugee means a daily struggle to feed her family and keep a roof over their heads. “You would have cried if you’d seen us…I came here with nothing, we had no food… we didn’t bring anything, just the clothes we were wearing,” she says.

Seeing Rasha in such a hopeless situation, a Lebanese man cleared out an old storage room for the family to live in. They spent the bitterly cold winter months with no running water, kitchen or bathroom. “We’d put a bowl outside and wash in it, my daughter would hold a blanket up for me. People would bring us food.”

Struggling to make ends meet

Rasha’s landlord let them live in the storage room for free at first, but now he has started charging rent. The family is registered with UNHCR and receives fuel and food vouchers, but she says that they are spending double the amount they receive on food and cannot afford their rent.

Rasha and her family have been in Lebanon for eight months now and are still borrowing money from neighbours and selling the few mattresses and blankets they have to scrape together the money they need to pay their rent. “If we don’t find the money to pay the landlord we will have to move into a tent,” she explains.

Like many Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Rasha and her family are trying to rebuild their lives, but with no savings, few job opportunities and a cost of living which is far higher than they were used to in Syria. They are struggling to get by.
Syrian refugees in Lebanon urgently need support to meet their basic living costs including rent, food, water and electricity.  ActionAid is establishing a programme to provide financial assistance to the most vulnerable refugees, but we need your support to do so.

>> Donate to the Syria Crisis Appeal

Hundreds of refugees wait to register at the entrance to Zaatari Refugee Camp. Women hold small children in their arms, some carry suitcases and small bags, others have come with nothing but the clothes they are wearing. Driving around the perimeter of the camp offers a glimpse into what life is like here – the world these new arrivals are entering into. 

Today it is hot and the sun burns down on the camp. Men and women sit on the floor, squeezing into the small piece of shade cast by their tent; some watch children play in the gravel, some simply stare out across the plain of the Jordanian desert.

Others busy themselves with daily tasks; carrying buckets of water back and forth from the large tanks dotted around the camp, sweeping out the dust from their tents, or pinning out the few clothes they have on the strings which snake between the thousands of tents and prefabricated units.

There is so little to do here that many pass the time by talking. They tell each other their stories – of what life was like in their town or village under the conflict, of the moment they decided to leave, of loved ones they left behind. Many describe lives under fire; weeks spent hiding in shelters or basements, of bombings and air strikes on their homes and villages, of houses burned, of fleeing under gun fire.

A young man tries to explain what life was like in Syria before he left. He stops midway and shows me instead with a video on his phone. It is a scene of chaos – shooting, shouting and screaming. A burned body is covered and a man is rushed into an ambulance.  His wife tells him to put it away, that no good can come from remembering what happened.

The majority of people I speak to feel safer here, but the sound of bombing over the border is a reminder of the ongoing destruction of their country, a sign that this tented city could be their home for weeks, months, or even years to come.

>> Donate to our Syria Crisis Appeal 

About this time last week I was recovering after getting up at ridiculous-o-clock to join 500 committed campaigners dressed as George Osborne in Parliament Square.

A 70-ft riser took (some fairly reluctant) photo-journalists to the perfect vantage point for capturing an aerial shot of the ‘Georges’ arranged into the shape of the word ‘IF’. We certainly captured the imagination of the press and public alike, later appearing in Time magazine, the Sun and on Newsnight, among dozens of other outlets.

Take a look at this short video of the day:

But while the stunt was fun and fairly silly, the message was absolutely serious and important. Ahead of his Budget, we wanted George Osborne to pay close attention the Enough IF campaign, and particularly to the key target of keeping our nation’s promise to spend just 0.7 per cent of our collective income on helping the world’s poorest people. And he did.

With one in eight people in the world still going hungry – notwithstanding the fact that there is enough food for all of us – this was a momentous day for global development. There is enough food IF, we tackle the structural causes of world hunger.

Join us and add your name to the Enough IF campaign now

"I came with my husband and our children. We didn’t have time to bring anything with us. We were attacked in our homes. We only brought the clothes we were wearing...we weren’t planning to leave, but we had no choice, we just fled."

Amalia is a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon. She left Syria over a year ago, but so fresh in her mind are the memories of the night they left, she could be talking about something that happened yesterday.

He still remembers what he saw
 
Amalia isn’t the only one of her family affected by the events they witnessed. She explains that even now her daughter still gets frightened when she hears loud bangs. But it is her eldest son, 11, who she thinks has been most affected: “he is stressed and depressed and refuses to go to school. May be it’s because he’s the eldest and he’s old enough to understand – he still remembers what happened and what he saw.”
 
Amalia and her family fled to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. They found safety there, but have struggled to support themselves and adjust to their new life as refugees:

“At the beginning it was really difficult, it’s got a little easier now. We didn’t have any support when we first arrived. The grocery store would give us food and we would pay later. Then we started buying things in really small quantities – just a kilo of rice at a time.”

Seven in one room

Like many Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the family struggled to find anywhere they could afford to live. They resorted to renting the premises of an abandoned shop. It has a glass front that looks out onto the road, bare breeze block walls, a cold concrete floor and no kitchen. It also has rats.

They have constructed a room within it using pieces of wood and plastic sheeting to give them privacy and a little warmth. Inside it is dark and cramped and the seven members of the family sleep in one room together.

We are not managing

Amalia and her husband pay 200,000 Lebanese lira (£87) a month to live here. But Amalia’s husband has been out of work for the last three months and they haven’t been able to meet the payments. Next month her landlord is increasing it to 230,000 (£103), pushing them further into debt: “we need money to pay towards the rent. We are not managing,” she says.

Amalia’s situation isn’t unusual. Thousands of refugees are struggling to meet the costs of accommodation, food and bills.

Over the coming weeks and months ActionAid will be supporting refugees in Lebanon through livelihoods programmes which will help refugees to support themselves. To do this we need your help.

>> Donate to the Syria Crisis Appeal