Four years ago, in March 2011 when the Arab Spring was at its height, conflict broke out in Syria.

Since then, more than 190,000 people have been killed in the fighting, and 12.2 million people inside Syria are in need of assistance. When I hear numbers of people killed, or numbers of people in need, I struggle to really put that into context. What does 12.2 million people really mean? What does it look like? Who are these people?

Well, 12.2 million people is the entire population of New South Wales and Queensland combined.It’s around half of Australia’s total population.

Imagine if half of Australia’s population was living in a country wracked with war and in need of humanitarian assistance.

And 4,465 – the number of schools inside Syria that have been destroyed or used as shelters. That’s around half of the total number of schools in all of Australia. Imagine if suddenly one of every two schools across the country were no longer safe to be used. Imagine how many children in Australia would no longer be able to attend school and get an education, one of their fundamental rights as a child.

Numbers are hard and after a while you become numb to hearing such enormous figures, like 3.8 million Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict or 7.6 million Syrians displaced from their homes still inside Syria.

When you hear these numbers over and over, you no longer picture that one child who has not been able to attend school in four years. Or that family who is living in just a flimsy tent and with no blankets, trying to stay warm as a devastating snow storm sweeps through the region as it did in January.

Or that a teacher who, despite living in a warzone, continues to teach what students have remained.

This is what we should be remembering, not those impersonal numbers, but individual people who four years ago lived lives that weren’t too different from ours.

People like Abu Yamen, a 37-year-old who escaped the heavy shelling in his hometown in Syria three years ago. He arrived in Lebanon with his then pregnant wife and children after a three day journey without food or water. He has witnessed three winters in Lebanon, each worse than the last. His tent has collapsed twice and he can no longer bare the helplessness he feels when he sees his children suffering from the freezing cold. He asks, ‘Where do I go with my family?

How can anyone see their children suffer and become homeless in front of their eyes knowing that there is nothing to do?’

As we go about our daily lives, it’s easy to forget about the plight of the people caught up in conflicts in different lands. Even living close to it, I sometimes forget.

Last Saturday night in Beirut, I was walking to my apartment when a Syrian boy around 10-years-old asked me for some money. As I turned around to face him I realised that he was crying, and in his broken English told me about his parents who were still in Syria.

Despite my job as a humanitarian worker, it’s not very often that I am faced with such clear desperation outside of the hours that I work. It made me stop in my tracks, and look into the crying eyes of a child who had been caught up in a war that wasn’t his fault, and who will most likely feel the effects of this war for many years due to lost education, the emotional and psychological impact of experiencing conflict, and lost opportunities.

I don’t know this boy, but I do know that there are many children like him throughout the Middle East, without proper shelter, without warm clothes and blankets to get them through the winter months, and with diminishing hope.

The whole region stands at a critical point as we approach the 4th anniversary of the Syrian crisis. Last March, the people of Melbourne stood in Federation Square with their candles and showed their support for those caught up in the Syrian crisis. Support for the women, men, boy and girls who have been forced to flee their homes, and are living in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan or Turkey in poor shelters, with little food and with few prospects to improve their lives.

This year, on the 15th of March 2015, we urge you to once again show your support for those who have been unfairly caught up in this conflict.

Use your voice to urge members of Parliament to continue to fund humanitarian programs supporting Syrian refugees and those still inside Syria: education programs so children can continue to learn and be ready to support their country when the fighting stops; and child protection programs so children are given the protection and support they need after fleeing violence and seeing family members killed or injured.

These programs give children and their families hope, and allows them to realise the rights they have a human beings regardless of where in the world they are from or what fighting is happening in their country.

Sarah Ireland | Humanitarian Policy & Advocacy Advisor | Save the Children Australia