Mr. Mustafa Al Manla:

I thank committee members for giving me their time today. I am from Kafr Karmin, a village outside Aleppo in north-west Syria. Until 2012, I was an English language teacher, responsible for more than 80 students. The year 2012 was very difficult for me because that was when I left Syria and left behind my family, including my mother, father, sisters and brothers. I left my land and house and the students whom I used to teach. In 2012, I walked through the border to Turkey. I had decided to do something important to support those suffering from the conflict on a daily basis and reduce their suffering. I am here today to tell the committee how Syrian people suffer what I have also experienced. The majority of them have lost their homes and land. They have been living in camps and tents for nine years without any opportunity to have a livelihood. They have lost everything. They used to be teachers like me or doctors, farmers or nurses.

As Ms Van Lieshout mentioned, I work as the emergency programme co-ordinator. My main area of responsibility is north Syria. I have been in this role for more than three years and in that time I have seen the infrastructure of the area destroyed and millions of people lose their homes, jobs, schools and livelihoods and their lives.

What we do at GOAL is very practical. We give cash, food items such as sugar, olive oil and rice, and non-food items such as tents, mattresses, blankets and even toothpaste. Imagine, the people being served by GOAL do not even have toothpaste. Our services are keeping people alive. In addition, through our lifesaving WASH programme, we pump 1 million litres of water every week, supporting 750,000 people through piped water. As committee members may know, in Syria piped water is very rare. We also support 32 bakeries through providing yeast and flour. This ensures that 600,000 people have proper access to fresh bread every day. This package of three vital humanitarian services is lifesaving for these people.

I know how important this work is. Thousands of people have had their lives destroyed. We have doctors pleading for any type of job just to have something in their pockets to cover their urgent needs. We need to look at the livelihoods of all of these displaced people.

As members heard, there is a huge number, amounting to 6.2 million. We need to consider their livelihoods. It is a big problem.

What we are doing is vital. It is also very dangerous. Four of my colleagues have lost their lives in air strikes. My colleagues work in a war zone every day. They are always thinking about what will happen to their families if they die. I see the worry they carry every day. Every day the children hear bombs and see air strikes. This has become the norm but, as members know, it is not normal.

It is important to air the view that children are the next generation. It is the responsibility of us all to take care of them. We should not forget the humanitarian worker. We must recognise the courage of the humanitarian workers who are risking their lives every day to support those in great need of humanitarian services. GOAL provides the basics - food, tents and cash - but it is still not enough to cover what is needed to survive. As a result of this conflict, 6.2 million people have been internally displaced. Every one of these has a story like mine. Two million of them have been displaced to north-west Syria, where GOAL is fully operational. Those are the people directly benefiting from the GOAL programme.

I thank all our donors and the members for listening to my story. This is the greatest humanitarian crisis in decades. I thank the Irish Government and Irish Aid for supporting us. Please stay with us. We need your support more than ever.