Announcer:	The Missouri State Journal, a weekly program keeping you in touch with Missouri State University.
Emily Yeap:	Children are the biggest casualty of the Syria war, raging since 2011. Thousands of them have been killed, injured and ripped apart from their families. To shed light on the humanitarian crisis, a film crew, comprising Missouri State University students and alumni, is creating a feature-length documentary through Carbon Trace Productions. Led by Dr. Andrew Cline, associate professor of media, journalism and film, it will highlight the plight of refugee children and the work pediatric neurologist Dr. Tarif Bakdash, a Syrian American, is doing to help them through the Syrian American Medical Society's (SAMS) medical missions. I'm Emily Yeap. Cline joins me today to share more about the project and his experience from his recent filming trip to Jordan.
Andrew Cline:	The documentary we're working on is going to focus on a particular mental health issue in Syrian refugee children that's been emerging since the beginning of the war. Dr. Khaled Hamza, who is chairman of the psychological committee for the Syrian American Medical Society, has coined the term “Human Devastation Syndrome.” Think of it as post-traumatic stress disorder on steroids. He is seeing reactions in children that are quite alarming. Basically, these are kids who have become refugees, one or more parents dead. They may be suffering a physical trauma of some sort. What Dr. Hamza is describing is basically the psychological trauma that comes with that and follows from that.
Emily Yeap:	The Jordan trip involved attending a SAMS medical mission and talking to refugees. Cline explains.
Andrew Cline:	We worked mostly in clinics in Amman, in Irbid and in a small town within sight of Syria called Mafraq. It was quite chaotic. The first hour that we worked, I kept thinking to myself, "What the heck am I doing here?" We were just lost. They were packed with mothers and kids, all of them refugees, all of them there to get care. There were three doctors working that day. 
	As the first hours wound on, we became more comfortable in our environment. We had a really great interpreter. Her name was Jemma Ali, a Syrian refugee herself, 14 years old. A lot of moxie, a lot of poise, and she was able to get us interviews and picture permissions that we might not have had otherwise, and it helped smooth out our first day. Then we kind of got our footing. We talked to lots of kids and lots of parents. Mostly mothers, but there were some fathers. First, we'd start by asking them about the homes they left and then asked them about their journey out of Syria and then asked them about their situation in Jordan.
Emily Yeap:	Bakdash, whose memoir, “Inside Syria” was the impetus for this documentary, grew up in Syria and worked with President Bashar al-Assad's regime before the conflict began. He started volunteering with SAMS in 2014. Having seen the devastation firsthand, he urges Americans to take action.
Tarif Bakdash:	12.5 million are displaced inside Syria. Five million outside Syria, and the majority are actually going to be women and children. These children do not have psycho-social support, so we have to think of it that way, that these kids lost their parents. Sometimes they lost one of their parents. They lost their brothers, their friends. We saw a kid with Andy when we were in Jordan. He was walking with his friends, actually, after the raid by the Russians and the Syrians. They saw something on the ground, and they pulled and exploded. Killed all his friends around him, and the poor kid lost both of his legs and his hand, besides his right eye.
	When you think, we have thousands of kids like that. We as American nation, we need to think about how can we help these poor kids. We are a nation of might, not because we have weapons, but because we have compassion, love and kindness.
Emily Yeap:	Cline's goal is to complete the documentary in 2018. When completed, this is the message he wants viewers to take away.
Andrew Cline:	Children are innocent. The Syrian refugee children have done nothing wrong. They don't have politics. They haven't hurt anybody. They don't take positions in the world pro or counter to American interests. They're just kids, trying to grow up. I think what happens, especially in the U.S., is children get painted with a broad brush. The children aren't terrorists. They're refugees. They are innocent, and they need our help. I want this film to put that idea front and center.
Emily Yeap:	To help with this project, donate to the documentary film fund at missouristatefoundation.org. I'm Emily Yeap for the Missouri State Journal.
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