The People’s Convoy launched this weekend from the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in west London to a mass of media coverage. With representatives from the organising partners giving interviews to many major media outlets, the cold December morning was filled with a buzz of excitement and optimism. This is the first ever crowdfunded hospital, with over 4,000 single donations, the people had spoken and were standing with Syrians.
Before the truck with the medical supplies and equipment for the children’s hospital left for their long journey on the road to Aleppo, we saw an address from core convoy team (Dr Rola Hallam, Dr Saleyha Ahsan, Dr Zaher Sahloul and Paul Conroy) and Leila Alikarami from the Nobel Women’s Initiative - it was broadcast live on Facebook.
Dr Rola Hallam said the success of the fundraising through people coming together was “a ray of light and hope”, adding “This is a display of the best of humanity”.
A response to war crimes
She also spoke of catalyst for the People’s Convoy, the recent bombing in eastern Aleppo that saw the last remaining children’s hospital obliterated had sparked the idea of rebuilding a hospital using CanDo’s localised humanitarian model which includes crowdfunding as it’s main source of fundraising. A response to the situation in Aleppo was critical so an emergency campaign was put together with a team of organising partners and launched with less than 3 weeks to fundraise.
On the subject of the targeting of health care facilities and workers, Dr Rola Hallam said “If hospitals are destroyed we will keep rebuilding, we will not be stopped from doing our lifesaving work. This is our way of bringing to light the attacks on hospitals. This has to stop, we don’t accept the status quo”
A chain reaction
The UK were joined by a French convoy on Saturday, delivered by Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (“UOSSM”) France. UOSSM are transporting medical supplies and equipment to re-equip a number of clinics in Aleppo. They are also fundraising €100,000 for medicines and other medical supplies for the clinics. They are currently just over 86% of their fundraising target so please donate to support their convoy if you can.
More fantastic news came this morning as we’ve had another country reach out to do their own convoy - the more countries that take this up, the more hospitals that can be rebuilt and more medical workers supported to do their job; save more lives!
Convoy status
The fundraising website was inundated over the weekend, and as of this morning (Monday 19th December) and incredible 4,052 people have raised £190,481. We have also been flooded with messages of support and love from the public from the People’s Convoy and messages to be delivered to Syrians in solidarity which have come in via the hashtags #PeoplesConvoy and #Messages4Syria.
Any money raised over our target of £91,432 will go towards the operating costs of the hospital. The fundraising page will be open until 1st January so we’re on a drive to raise as much as we can before the campaign comes to an end. Please continue to share, support and donate whatever possible.
Some news coverage of the launch includes;
- The Telegraph - 'People's Convoy' leaves London for Syria
Stay in contact
We will be regularly updating CanDo’s social media channels Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and emailing our community. If you would like to receive emails please sign up at our website.
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Core convoy team
- Dr Rola Hallam, consultant Anaesthetist, Founder and CEO of CanDo
- Dr Zaher Sahloul, Founder and Executive Member at American Relief Coalition for Syria, a coalition of 14 Syrian American Diaspora humanitarian organizations helping millions of Syrians and Syrian refugees.
- Paul Conroy, freelance photographer and filmmaker, was injured in Homs in 2012, in the same attack that killed war correspondent Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times
- Dr Saleyha Ahsan, an emergency medicine doctor and freelance journalist and filmmaker, who was was the first Muslim woman to graduate from Sandhurst as a British Army Officer
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