The Syrian civil war began in 2011 and has turned approximately 6.7 million Syrians into refugees. Nine years on, the conflict continues. “We never expected to live this kind of endless nightmare of loss,” Lina Sergie Attar said in a TEDx Talk in 2017. “No Syrian did.”
Originally from Aleppo, Sergie Attar started the Karam Foundation back in 2007 by organizing a food drive in Chicago. She’s since used her foundation to respond to the crisis and help the most vulnerable refugees—kids. At Karam House, which has two locations in Turkey, Syrian kids can learn everything from entrepreneurship and graphic design to journalism and technology, skills which prepare them to attend college. The goal for Attar and her team for 2020: building Karam Houses in Jordan and Lebanon.
