The United States has a crisis at its southern border, but several years before this became an American problem, the European Union was facing its own crisis.
In 2011, the Syrian government launched a violent crackdown on public protests. That led to a civil war that has caused millions of people to flee the violence in Syria over the last twelve years, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. But migrants are also pouring out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and more recently, Sudan.
What happens to the people on the run, the ones seeking safety, opportunity, and a happier, healthier life – when governments and aid organizations fail them?
By 2015, the world watched news reports of refugees traveling in barely-seaworthy vessels, often to the coast of Greece. You may remember the image from a particularly heart-stopping story of a little boy, just a toddler, face down on a Turkish beach. Drowned.
Months later, Dana Sachs learned about the dire humanitarian need of refugees in Greece who survived the dangerous crossing. She and some friends started their own aid effort to support the grassroots organizations that had already sprung up. They eventually launched their own nonprofit, Humanity Now. Dana Sachs is a journalist whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic. She has written two novels and three books of nonfiction. Her most recent: All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis.
Dana Sachs leads a book discussion May 16, 2023 at 5:30 PM at WHQR Public Media: 254 N. Front Street, 3rd floor, Wilmington, NC 28401
Resources:
The book, All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis, is available at bookshop.org and Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, NC.
Humanity Now, nonprofit organization based in Wilmington serving migrants and associated grass-roots volunteer efforts in Greece and Ukraine
