Mobile pools offer relief from heat to children in Syria camps

Published August 26, 2024
Displaced Syrian children play in a mobile swimming pool set up by the Smile Younited charity organisation, during the sweltering summer heat in the Kafr Naseh camp.—AFP
Displaced Syrian children play in a mobile swimming pool set up by the Smile Younited charity organisation, during the sweltering summer heat in the Kafr Naseh camp.—AFP

KAFR NASEH: In a run-down north Syria camp, children displaced by the country’s 13-year war played and splashed in volunteer-run mobile swimming pools that provided much-needed relief from the sweltering summer heat.

Volunteers from the Smile Younited charity barely had any time to finish setting up the three pools in a busy square surrounded by tents before children of all ages jumped in, dancing along to songs blasted on loudspeakers.

The pools at Kafr Naseh camp, in the Aleppo countryside, provided rare entertainment to young boys and girls whose lives have been scarred by war and poverty. Mohammad Ezzedine, 38, said he was thrilled to see his five children so happy.

“I hope they will come back every week... because it’s hot and the kids need to distract themselves and have fun” because “they live under pressure inside a confined camp,” he said.

The children “had never been to a pool before. The most we could do was put them in a plastic tub and fill it with water” when it is available to cool down in the summer, Ezzedine added. More than five million people, most of them displaced, live in areas outside government control in Syria’s north and northwest, the UN says, and many rely on aid to survive.

As the conflict drags on, a lack of international funding has severely undercut the provision of basic services including water, waste disposal and sanitation in displacement camps outside government control in Syria’s north and northwest.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2024

Opinion

Editorial

Trump 2.0
Updated 21 Jan, 2025

Trump 2.0

Few have forgotten how disruptive Trump could be as president. There has been little indication that his 2nd term will be any different.
GB’s status
21 Jan, 2025

GB’s status

THE demand raised by the people of Gilgit-Baltistan for constitutional clarity and provisional provincial status is...
Panda bond
Updated 21 Jan, 2025

Panda bond

ISLAMABAD’S plans to raise $200m from China’s capital markets through the inaugural issue of a Panda bond this...
At breaking point
Updated 20 Jan, 2025

At breaking point

The country’s jails serve as monuments to bureaucratic paralysis rather than justice.
Lower growth
20 Jan, 2025

Lower growth

THE IMF has slightly marked down its previous growth forecast for Pakistan’s economy from 3.2pc to 3pc for the...
Nutrition challenge
20 Jan, 2025

Nutrition challenge

WHEN a country’s children go hungry, its future withers. In Pakistan, where over 40pc of children under five are...