I Am Going to Syria. Will You Come With?

100 children. $25,000. A chance to turn your values into action.

Before I share why I’m going to Syria, I want to provide some context.

Over the past two decades plus I have traveled around the country and around the world to provide humanitarian and legal support and advocacy to those in crisis. From serving Katrina victims way back in 2005, to subsequent years of building schools in Mali, documenting occupation in Palestine, serving as a first responder to earthquake victims in Turkey, raising funds for a maternal care hospital in Guatemala, to providing legal aid to fire victims in Lahaina and Los Angeles—each of these journeys has reminded me of the same truth: the greatest privilege of my career as a human rights lawyer is not just in the cases I have won in courtrooms. It is the moments when I have been able to show up—physically, personally, with my hands and my voice and whatever resources I could carry—for people in crisis.

That calling does not get quieter with time. It gets louder.

And today, children in Syria cry out for support in the form of needing hearing aids. I am doing my best to respond to that call—as a human rights lawyer, as an activist, and as a father who sees these children as my own. I am asking you to proverbially come with me and make this trip a success. Here’s how.

Let’s Address This.

The Children We Are Going to Help

For this mission, our goal is to serve at least 100 children by providing hearing aids, medical support, and the resources they need to be ready for the next school year.

I am traveling to Syria with an extremely reputable non-profit known as SEMA, the Syrian Expatriate Medical Association. SEMA has been on the ground in Syria since 2013. In this valiant, sustained humanitarian work, SEMA’s medical missions have reached hundreds of thousands of Syrians across regions with populations of more than five million people. They have built emergency care facilities, ICUs, and the largest surgical hospital in the city of Idlib—a hospital constructed specifically to serve the millions of Syrians most directly devastated by the war. SEMA is not a new org chasing a flash of visibility. It offers decades of unglamorous, essential, life-saving work done by people who refuse to look away.

SEMA has already provided more than 1,300 custom hearing aids to children in Northern Syria. We want to help 100 more children. A hearing aid is life changing. It means a child can hear its mother’s voice. Or, walk into their classroom in September and hear their name called for the first time. Can hear their friends laughing. It means they can finally participate in the world around them.

The Goal: $25,000. 100 Children. One School Year Changed Forever.

Here is what we need and what it will do: $25,000 will fund hearing aids, medical assessments, and support services for at least 100 children in Northern Syria—getting them ready for the next school year so that their hearing loss does not define their academic future or their social lives.

This is not a theoretical donation to a distant bureaucracy. Every dollar raised goes directly through SEMA. This is a direct investment in children who will receive hearing aids before the school year begins—children whose names we will know, whose faces I will see, whose progress SEMA will document and share.

Why This Mission Is Personal

This part is uncomfortable, but if you know anything about my writing and advocacy, I never shy from uncomfortable conversations as that’s where accountability begins.

The children we are going to help in Syria are living with the consequences of a war that has been funded—in significant part—by American tax dollars. The weapons that destroyed their hearing, collapsed their homes, and shattered their communities—did not just pop into existence. Too often they were manufactured, sold, and supplied through systems that the US government funded and enabled for years. Georgetown University documents that quantity as billions in US arms sent to Syria.

I am not saying this to create guilt, but because I believe that human rights require honesty. If we believe in justice, we must reckon honestly with what has been done in our name, and then do something about it when we can. Going to Syria is my way of doing something about it. With the understanding that we cannot undo the past, but we can choose what we do next.

Closing Thoughts

Over the years, this community—the readers of Let’s Address This, have shown up for every fight we have fought. You have proven to me again and again: that ordinary people, acting together, can do extraordinary things.

Now I am asking you to help me raise $25K for hearing aids to 100 children in Syria.

I will be on the ground in Syria. I will document what I see. I will bring back the stories of the children we helped—and I will share them with you, because you will have made those stories possible.

Finally—let me offer this in case anyone asks: I am not being compensated for this trip. Nor will any of the funds raised go to me. Every penny will go to SEMA and the children in need of hearing aids. I am fundraising and traveling to Syria pro bono and solely for my love of, and commitment to, service to humanity. And my readers should know that your support of Let’s Address This is a significant reason why I am able to take on these massive and critical undertakings. My eternal gratitude do all of you.

The greatest calling in my life has always been to do my best to show up when it matters. Katrina. Mali. Turkey. Palestine, Guatemala. Los Angeles. Lahaina.

Syria is next.

Come with me.

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Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and humanitarian first responder. He is the host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, justice, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to provide. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for universal human rights.