First of all, thank you so much for reading my book! It would also mean a lot to me if you could go to the following link and take my completely anonymous survey so that I can have your feedback:
https://goo.gl/forms/5szwihhxBM34m2hO2
My name is Emily Patterson and I am 15 years old. Initially, I was going to write this book for my "Personal Project," but as I was planning the characters and deciding the plot, I came to a realisation that I didn't want this to be a school project anymore – I genuinely wanted to raise awareness about the current refugee crisis.
I got the idea for this book in early July of 2016 when I watched a video of the Hungarian guards at the Röszke camp throwing bread into a crowd of refugees. I was appalled whilst imagining how quickly it could've escalated into a stampede or fight, which in turn inspired the ending of my book. I have done an enormous amount of research, resulting in a total of 57 highly reliable and valid websites in this book alone! But even with all of this research, I have only just scratched the surface of the goings on of the refugee crisis. I've touched on police brutality, the difficult legal systems in place for refugees, the state of refugee camps, the timings and the costs of the journey, and so I hope that you, the reader, have learnt something.
I'd like to acknowledge the thousands of charity workers, volunteers, donors, spokespersons and activists in each and every country along the Balkans route. Everyday they continue to help refugees to ease their pain and welcome them as equals. I would like to also say that the governments involved in the crisis have done a lot too. For example, Turkey currently has over 2.8 million registered Syrian refugees, whilst 67,415 people arrived on the shores Greece in January of 2016 alone [UNHCR].
The whole point of this book is to educate and raise awareness about the hardships refugees face along their journey to Europe. I sincerely hope I delivered it in a meaningful and memorable way, as I strongly believe that one of the greatest tools mankind has in its possession is empathy. Empathy drives us to help others, to question the actions of our societies and challenge our governments.
Once again I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my book!
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Special Thanks to My Editors:
Georgia Gill
Komay Nguyen
Emmanuelle Roussat
Eloisa Cutillo
Aida Patterson
Acknowledgments:
Dianne Caskie
Stephen Caskie
Derek Patterson
John Patterson
Lara Ucucu
Emma Burns
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Have any questions about my book? Feel free to message me!
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Works Cited
Statistics of Number of Registered Syrian Refugees in Turkey. UNHCR, 22 Dec. 2016, data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=224.
UNHCR. "Greece data snapshot - 26 Jan 2017." UNHCR Data Portal - Greece, PDF ed., 26 Jan. 2017.
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