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In video, dancing refugee children show resilience and hope amidst suffering and loss

In a spirit of positivity and hopefulness, public affairs campaign Love4Syria recently released a YouTube video featuring refugee Syrian children singing and dancing along to the song “Happy.”

The video is called “Syria (Restore) Happy,” and its mission is “to showcase the resilience and youthfulness of children amidst conflict,” according to the video’s creators.

It was produced by three Syrian-Americans, of the nonprofit organization Beats, Rhymes and Relief, who took the footage while delivering toys, books, crayons and games to children in Syrian hospitals, schools and refugee camps in Jordan.

The 2013 hit song by Pharrell Williams played from portable speakers hung around the neck of the filmmaker as the children danced and played around him.

The video is connected with Love4Syria, which aims to help Syrian children and other refugees displaced by the war by streamlining aid efforts and providing “a simple way to contribute to support education and mental health relief programs” through credible, vetted organizations, according to the organizers.

“Until recently, Syria might not have been known to many, but with the current state of affairs, we definitely hear about it daily on the news,” reads the Love4Syria website. “Let’s show the children of Syria that the international community cares. Every human life is valuable.”

Now in its fourth year, the war in Syria has caused more than 2.8 million Syrians to flee the country as refugees, more than 1.4 million of these being children, according to the United Nations.

These children all face problems of access to food, water, medical care and education. The children are without homes and most — as many as three in four — have suffered the loss of a loved one.

On their website’s donation page, Love4Syria quotes the words of Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata: “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”

Behind the smiling faces in the video are children who are part of a humanitarian crisis, yet will still dance along to the song’s lyrics “Can’t nothing bring me down.”

“We want to show people that at the end of the day, children are children,” two of the video’s producers said. “It is our hope that with music we can raise consciousness about what’s happening in Syria and support the children in need.”