Alan Kurdi, One Year On.

Posted on by under Social commentary

There are good people out there. Sometimes it takes a crisis, a human tragedy, to bring them into the spotlight, but it encourages us and gives us hope for the future when we see these people and what they are doing. I have previously re-blogged posts of fellow-blogger justascottishgirl who went to the Isle of Kos to volunteer for a bit, and is still there today. It was a year ago today that the tiny, lifeless body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed ashore and the world woke up to the reality of the refugee crisis in Europe. People from all walks of life came to help … and stayed. Tina Brocklebank, a 46-year-old student from Yorkshire, spent a week constructing tents in the Calais refugee camp with the charity L’Auberge des Migrants, now part of the umbrella organization Help Refugees, last October. Almost a year later she is still there. Paul Hutchings, 48, from Brighton, volunteered in Calais last September. Devastated by what he saw, he quit his job as a market researcher this year to set up Refugee Support Europe, a charity based in Greece. Today, I am re-blogging our Scottish girl’s post commemorating the event that brought out the good in so many people. It is a short post, and I hope that you will all take a minute to read it and to leave a comment for our Scottish girl, to thank her for her efforts and offer your encouragement.

fromscotlandwithloveblog

It’s a year ago today since a picture woke up the world. A picture that made everyone stop and look. A picture that made those “swarms” we were warned of into something that had been left out of the narrative, a picture that reminded us that a refugee crisis was a human crisis.

People stopped. People thought. People cried. People organised. People acted.

A picture of a tiny lifeless body, not the first and most definitely not the last. A picture that we could put a name to, put a story to, that we could relate to. What if that was our child, our brother, our cousin, our friend? This child was a life, not a statistic.

This picture created an outcry. Everyone knew this could not continue. This had to stop.

There was a movement, an incredible social movement from the town halls of sleepy Scottish towns, to the…

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