Little Heroes 2017 – Lattakia

In early August 2017, our team of volunteers welcomed around 200 displaced and local Syrian children to our Little Heroes camp. Once again, we were hosted by the National Evangelical Church in Lattakia.

The theme of the three days was “the Story of the Field”. A field is a place of work and it sustains life, and the analogy we drew was that we must each work to take care of our own body and our spirit and work hand-in-hand if we are to thrive as the children of God.

We followed this theme in our Bible Studies, as well as through a specially-written play which was acted out over the three days. Seven of our volunteer leaders acted in the play. Before each scene, Orange (Rana) and Apple (Wadia) taught the children the message of the day through discussing how they could be friends and work together, despite their obvious differences.

The three days reflected on

• freeing ourselves  of hatred, fear and negativity;

• working to be a positive and good member of the community; and

• how God will know us by the fruits of our labours.

We divided the children according to their talents, forming five groups: theatre, music, art, crafts and writing. We presented each group with their own challenge, which was to use their talents to reflect on the theme of the programme.

The children greatly enjoyed their time with us, and their work amazed us. They showed great creativity and enthusiasm, and they started to challenge each other to do even better.

At the end of the three days, we invited the families and their friends and neighbours to come to an exhibition to see how hard the children had worked, and how wonderful were the results.  They were very impressed with what they saw, and we now have a long list of new children, waiting to take their place as Little Heroes.

Our heartfelt thanks go to The Revd Salam Hanna, our host, and to Archbishop Nikola Sawaf, Fr Atef Falah and Fr Habib Daniel.