Abbas’ story: The day to day challenges of a displaced family in camps

Access to basic services, especially water, sanitation, and hygiene services, remains one of the key issues in camps, where most of the displaced populations are hosted. ACTED has been implementing projects in camps in Syria since 2013 to provide better living conditions to the residents.

As of April 2018, the teams provided crucial services on a daily basis to over 150,000 people in 159 camps. ACTED is also conducting construction and rehabilitation works in the camps (camp roads, public and private latrines, water systems and sanitation networks) to improve the living conditions of all camp residents.

Abbas, 38 years old, lives with his wife and three children in one of the camps ACTED operates in. He explained that constant flooding of the toilets, as well as a lack of water and lighting created very poor hygiene conditions. Aware of this challenge, ACTED is conducting public latrines rehabilitations to improve displaced persons’ access to clean sanitation facilities. The population living in the camp has now access to new latrine blocks with lighting and water, and cleaners are taking care of the daily maintenance.

After arriving to the camp, Abbas started working as a water truck driver to transfer water to camp residents. As he explained, at that time, his job used to be a real struggle due to the poor conditions of the roads. To facilitate access from the water station to the camps, ACTED has conducted rehabilitations on the roads in late 2017. Abbas has seen his work conditions improved significantly since the rehabilitation, which also made life easier inside the camps, where bad weather doesn’t have the dramatic impact it used to, especially the heavy winter rains.