Humans of New York: Syrian Refugee Series
The cover of the HONY book show the pictures of people who have been interviewed.
Nov 9, 2015
Our Rating: A+
The popular Instagram page Humans of New York, known to fans as HONY, continues to impress its followers through their amazing posts. This page is dedicated to showing glimpses of the lives of people of New York. Their social media posts are composed of a photo of the person that is being interviewed, accompanied by a quote from the person. HONY currently has over four million followers and has even published two books with their famous posts.
A mini-series was created about this man whom the owners of HONY had previously met working at a hotel.
When Brandon Stanton, the owner of the page, travels, he interviews locals and posts their photo on Instagram. This summer Stanton visited Greece, where the Syrian refugee crisis is concentrated, and documented the personal stories of those who were victims of modern day slavery in the area. A fundraiser was set up to aid them and it received over two million dollars. In the past weeks, the owners of the Instagram page visited Greece for two weeks and interviewed refugees who sought asylum in Greece about the hardships they faced to escape their homeland.
“I’m a really big fan of Humans of New York and, not going to lie, I wasn’t as caught up as I would’ve liked to be on the refugee situation that has been going on. So thanks to him, I kind of learned a lot about it. I think he captured the whole thing so well, his pictures just showed so much of what was going on. It was one of my favorite series that he has done,” junior Bianca Pasci said.
This refugees is crying as she remembers the events that occurred as she moved to Greece, including the death of her husband.
HONY posted 32 photos with heartbreaking stories of the pain the refugees endured to arrive at Greece; sometimes posting a “mini-series” with the continuation of a story of a particular person. The stories of these refugees often depicted gruesome events that they witnessed in their country; Stanton brought to the forefront many common problems amongst refugees.
This family spoke about how the army continuously threatened to kill them until they had no choice but to sell everything and move to Greece without a single belonging.
The personal stories help shed a light on the plight of Syrian refugees and lead to the awareness of the problem. The stories also illustrate how horribly the people are often treated in their home country and how dreadful the situation is. A commonality amongst many of the stories is that many, if not all, of the refugees sold all of their belongings to be able to voyage across the Mediterranean. But once they gave the money to the smuggler, the smuggler would abandon them or send them on a poorly constructed boat overflowing with people, which would lead to the death of many.
After two weeks, HONY ended the “Refugee Series,” but not before sharing the link to a kickstarter where anyone can make a donation that goes directly to aiding these Syrian refugees. The fundraiser has raised over $1.7 million that goes to the United Nations’ Refugee Agency. HONY is always posting fascinating stories of individuals, as well as helping important causes and motivating the public to do so as well.
