Reema lives in a single room in Lebanon with her parents and four siblings, in a building still under construction. There are piles of rubble all around, no windows, no comfort.

She says, “I was at school when it was bombed. Some of the children were killed. We all ran away. When we saw the bombing of the school we thought they bombed all schools all over the world.”

Reema misses her city, her school, her teachers and her friends. She doesn’t know what happened to them. Her mother doesn’t let her outside in case she gets hurt, as they can’t pay for medical treatment. She can’t go to school, even though in Syria she was at a school for bright students and was in the top class.

“I don’t have a pencil, no paper, no nothing. I see children going to school and I cry, ‘Why don’t I have the right to go to school?’ and I sit here and I remember our home back in Syria before the fighting.”

A year ago Reema’s home in Syria was destroyed by the bombing. Each time the fighting got worse her family was forced to move on, eventually spending months living underground with no electricity. Looking around, Reema says, “We moved sand and stones from here with our own hands so we could try and have some kind of normal living here. There are a lot of rats. I’ve seen them. We get sick because of them.”

Reema’s family will be receiving money as part of our cash transfer program to pay their rent over the next two months, but they’ll need help for a lot longer than that. we are aiming to reach 650,000 people by the end of 2013, and we still very much need your support.

Reema’s name has been changed to protect her identity.