Math teacher’s Syria aid mission

A Cayman Islands math teacher spent his summer in Turkey working with Syrian refugees who have fled the brutal civil war in their homeland. 

Ted Todd spent his summer holiday teaching Syrian youngsters living in temporary accommodation without access to formal education in Istanbul. 

The teacher, who enlisted the help of his students at John Gray High School in a fundraising campaign, drove a van full of school supplies on a 2,000-mile road trip from England to Turkey where he teamed up with a local charity providing assistance to refugees. 

Mr. Todd, who was accompanied on the charity mission by his 19-year-old daughter, also traveled to a refugee camp on the Syrian border to deliver teaching supplies. 

He said the trip was a humbling experience and exposed him to the human side of a story that has dominated world news coverage for months as the crisis in Syria has intensified. 

“A lot of the families I met want to go back to Syria. They left out of desperation because they don’t want to be killed,” he said. 

He said he met people with extremely sad stories, including one man whose cousin was killed at a military checkpoint “because he had the wrong name.” Others had seen homes or businesses destroyed in the fighting. 

Mr. Todd linked up with nonprofit organization Small Projects Istanbul, which focuses its efforts on a growing refugee crisis in the Turkish capital. “These [refugees] are people that were able to escape Syria with some money in their pockets and some connections,” he said.  

“The issue is that they are outside of the system. They don’t have any legal status.” 

Small Projects Istanbul, established by an Australian teacher – herself an exile from Syria – focuses on providing education and helping find shelter for the refugees. 

Mr. Todd taught basic math to youngsters in a room at a community center. His daughter Angeli taught English. 

He added, “It was humbling because the children seemed to be happy, normal kids. But when you sit down and listen to some of their stories, they must have been through a lot of trauma.” 

He said charity efforts to aid refugees in Turkey were only just starting to get organized and the supplies, funded by a charity campaign in Cayman, would come in useful. 

“We really didn’t come with a lot,” he said. “The supplies we brought were a drop in the ocean when you consider there are potentially 100,000 refugees in Istanbul. But they were so grateful for what we brought.” 

Mr. Todd got a glimpse of the other side of the refugee crisis when he traveled to the Syrian border to bring additional supplies to a refugee camp close to the town of Gaziantep. 

“The charity we were working with had made up some food parcels and medical supplies that we were able to take down there using the van.” He said conditions inside the small camp for 350 refugees were basic. 

“The problem is that they end up in a camp and they are just looked after there, surviving, waiting for the whole thing to end.” 

Mr. Todd plans to give presentations about his trip in school and to Rotary clubs around the island.