A trainee solicitor is preparing for his second trip to Syria to offer direct help to refugees who have fled atrocities in their home land.

Umar Tahir will travel to a refugee camp on the border with Lebanon for a week to help with distributing food and medical aid and help people build more suitable accommodation.

Tahir, who works at the Brabners office in Manchester, made a similar trip in 2019 and will be reunited with some of the same children he met on that first visit.

Syrian refugee camps: aid mission

Tahir will be reunited with some of the same children he met on his first visit

Source: Umar Tahir

He has spent recent months helping to collect food packs, winter clothing and building materials, as well as fundraising to collect £10,000 to enable the aid mission.

Tahir, 25, said it was important to visit the camps in person as well as do the fundraising and charity collection work in the UK.

‘It is very different to seeing the camps on the news and it has such an impact on you when you put faces to name and see how people are living,’ he said.

‘It is quite emotional the first time you are there and it takes a couple of days to come to terms with what you are seeing – you’re taken aback by how mad it is.’

Tahir and his team of 10 other volunteers from the Muslim Charity will concentrate on building brick shelters that can help withstand the floods which have hit the area in recent months.

‘It is only when you get there you experience how cold it is and the fact that children are running around with just a t-shirt to protect them from it.’

The 25-year-old was a paralegal with Brabners before starting his training contract in 2020. He studied at the University of Manchester and did the LPC through the University of Law.

He thanked colleagues at his firm for donations and messages of support before he takes the trip next week. Anyone wanting to give to the cause should visit Charity Fundraiser is fundraising for Muslim Charity (justgiving.com).