Meet Mustapha and his wife Safaa, who risked their lives in hope of finding safety for their young children in Europe. The family of four fled from the war­ravaged city of Aleppo to Turkey and then took the dangerous boat journey to the Greek island of Lesbos. Mustafa is aware of the backlash against refugees that has engulfed Europe since the Nov.

Actor and activist Mandy Patinkin recently witnessed first­hand the refugee crisis engulfing Europe. Alongside International Rescue Committee aid workers in Greece, he met families who had fled Syria and other war­torn countries in hopes of finding a better life for their children in Europe. “Standing with them, I did not see strangers to be feared but the faces and stories of my own family.

Over 600,000 Syrian refugees are currently in Jordan, 80% of whom live in urban areas among Jordanian neighbors.  In February the International Rescue Committee organized a two-week social-therapy workshop at our women's center in the city of Irbid that brought together Syrian refugee teenagers and their Jordanian counterparts.

In these extraordinary times, the world needs courageous leadership. That is what the International Rescue Committee was founded to provide. Our first employee, Varian Fry, issued fake passports from a safe house in Nazi-occupied Marseille to help people escape persecution during WWII.

Conflict and drought have brought millions of people in East Africa to the brink of starvation in what is shaping up to be the most severe humanitarian crisis of our time.