IN ALEPPO, WE ARE THE ONES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR–PLEASE READ

Okay, beloveds, circle up. I am going to break this down as simply and clearly as I can because there is no time for fancy words.

ALEPPO. I need you to understand that if you are watching Aleppo and lamenting your inability to help- stop lamenting. YOU ARE HELPING THERE. RIGHT NOW. Through Together Rising, you have given more than $2,000,000 to refugees in the past year. You are helping to send a mobile hospital this week that will arrive in Aleppo on Christmas Day. WE HAVE A PLAN TO DO MORE. DO NOT SHUT DOWN. STAY AWAKE, PLEASE. WE ARE THE ONES WE’RE WAITING FOR.

Because I know you, I know how you feel when you read about the atrocities there and see the pictures of the babies dying. I know. It feels impossible. You feel paralyzed. I’ll tell you how I feel. I watch the reports and I think: Wait. Who the hell is in CHARGE around here? Is anyone paying any freaking attention at all? Where are the world leaders? Where are the grown-ups? Aren’t there RULES about life and death and right and wrong and good and evil we’re all supposed to be at least TRYING to follow on this mother effing Earth?? I feel like this year I’ve discovered that there is no Oz behind the curtain. And it’s scary. But that’s when we learn that the magic is inside of us – and has been all along. That’s when we remember that WE ARE THE ONES WE’RE WAITING FOR. And we stop waiting and start moving.

We move from pity: Your pain in my heart –

To compassion: Your pain in my heart and BACK OUT THROUGH MY HANDS.

Together Rising has partnered with Help Refugees for over a year. Many aid groups, including the UN, reached out to us, but we chose Help Refugees – a women-led relief group, because they are simply the most nimble, most passionate, most effective team we could find and have been honored again and again the world over because of it. Our Together Rising Board is in constant contact with the leaders of Help Refugees, making-real time decisions about aid on the ground. We are IN IT with them. Which means YOU are in it with them. I need you to understand that if you are watching Aleppo and lamenting your inability to help- stop lamenting. You ARE helping and have been helping. Together Rising has given more than $2,000,000 to on the ground aid workers serving refugees. We are the number one funder to Help Refugees world wide. Your compassion and your funds are saving lives every single day — so we need to take ourselves seriously here. Now we do more. Listen up.

We talked to Dani from Help Refugees last night, and their eyes and ears on the ground, The Syria Campaign. Here’s what we’re going do: There are two very special groups on the ground in Aleppo that have applied to Help Refugees and Together Rising with desperate pleas for immediate support. Together Rising – through you, is going to answer their pleas. The groups we are going to partner with on the ground in Aleppo are The While Helmets and Independent Doctor’s Association. We’ve done our research. These are the teams we want. They are doing the best and bravest work in Syria.

Specifically, here’s what we’re going to do:

• We are going to purchase and fully equip two ambulances with medicine and medical supplies for 6 months, and enable The White Helmets to rescue children and vulnerable people trapped in the rubble;
• We will equip the mobile hospital – that you helped to send, and which is arriving in Aleppo on Christmas Day – with medicine and supplies for serving the injured;
• We are going to help Independent Doctor’s Association fund the planning of the first pediatric hospital in the region; and
• We are going to continue to fund the work of the Help Refugees volunteer network devoted to delivering people to safety.

First, the White Helmets: When the bombs rain down, the White Helmets rush in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need – regardless of their religion or politics. They are often the only hope for innocents trapped under the rubble. White Helmet volunteers have saved more than 76,000 lives – and this number is growing daily.  Many of the White Helmets have paid the ultimate price – 156 have been killed while saving others. Two all-women White Helmet teams of the 56 heroes came together in 2014 to search and rescue and to provide medical care to female victims. Here are a few of them:

We would like to give the White Helmets $150,000 to purchase and fully equip two ambulances with medicine and medical supplies for 6 months, and enable their crews to rescue children and vulnerable people trapped in the rubble.

Listen, through the money you have already given through Together Rising this year, you have been a huge part of building a mobile hospital that is leaving London on Saturday. Your mobile hospital will arrive in Aleppo on Christmas Day.

With our new funding we raise this week, we will equip the mobile hospital with medicine and supplies for serving the injured as long as necessary. We are also going to help fund the planning of a pediatric hospital in a safer area, as no specialized pediatric facilities currently exist in the region. The hospital will be entirely funded by public donations and staffed by British doctors who will transport incubators, beds and medicines across Europe to the Syrian border, where the Independent Doctor’s Association will take over. From there, they will drive the supplies into Syria and do what they do best: treat sick and wounded children.

Since Tuesday night, you have raised $217,000 for Aleppo. If we keep giving, we can fund both of these life-saving projects. Please remember that if you’re considering giving to Aleppo, Together Rising is a good choice. We are one of the only aid organizations I know that can guarantee you that every penny we receive will go DIRECTLY TO AID GROUPS ON THE GROUND. Zero wasted. There is no time, or energy, or love to waste.

Grateful to serve this jacked up, brutal, beautiful world alongside you.

Love,

G & Together Rising

P.S. To see some of where your refugee donations have been devoted in the last year, please read here and here.

UPDATE: $1.65 million dollars raised for refugee relief in the past 10 days. As of this afternoon- 100% of what we received has been distributed to our partners on the ground. TONIGHT, now, your money is clothing, warming, saving, healing our Syrian brothers and sisters and babies. Full report coming soon. Thank you to the tireless Together Rising team for making this careful, nimble turnaround of love funds possible. Thank you to the TWENTY THREE THOUSAND gIvers who made manifest your belief that we belong to each other. You made it real. Tonight, Sister and I are spending Christmas Eve Eve trying to secure further funds for refugees in honor of our refugee birthday boy. Go Jesus, it’s your birthday. It’s a long battle, but love will win.#togetherrising#compassioncollective

These are hard times and it is true that darkness abounds. So does light. Light will win.

Photos by The White Helmets and the Independent Doctors Association.