Friday, October 13, 2017

Story of a Syrian girl living the life of a refugee in Turkey

This is the story of a girl I spoke to on Opentalk. She was studying Civil Engineering while residing in Aleppo 4 years back. This is when ISIS entered Aleppo and she was forced to leave her home and her belongings to save her life (part of her family is still living in Syria). It has been 3 years now that she has been in Turkey as a refugee. She speaks only 20% Turkish and only few words of English. Initial few months were really difficult as they had to live off the government aid and could not take of themselves much. However, things got slowly better as she got work as a volunteer for looking after the refugees and immigration department. This is anyhow much far away from what she has studied to become. However, in the last 6 months, things have gone from bad to worse. The Turkish government has cancelled the work permit for the refugees so they are not able to work and earn a living. This is really troublesome as most of them do not speak Turkish or English very well and can not get a job without a work permit. She aspires to do a masters however, that requires money. So She has been looking for work and using applications like Opentalk to improve her fluency in English and become a better speaker.

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