Five years in, the Syrian crisis has displaced 2.4 million Syrian children, and left more than eight million children in need of aid. As the world’s leader in humanitarian aid for children, UNICEF has been working tirelessly to secure the protection and rights of these children. The campaign objective is to destigmatize child refugees in neighboring countries, while reinforcing UNICEF’s global “children are children” strategy. The communication had to be adapted by a wide range of UNICEF’s global chapters to support their local partners in transit and in destination countries.

UNICEF spoke with hundreds of refugees, to hear their tragic stories, first-hand, in their own words. The challenge was to tastefully turn their gruesome, gut-wrenching stories into delicate art pieces through narration and a visual style fitting of their testimony. The campaign uses the lightness of classic children’s stories to undercut the very real, very tragic stories that these children are facing every day. Through a variety of animation styles and across a wide range of different mediums, we were able to engage people all over the world in a new conversation, amplified by coverage on some of the biggest news channels in the world. The campaign was launched at the Syrian Donor Conference with the presence of Malala Yousafzai and the British prime-minister David Cameron, and on CNN International.

UNICEF spoke with hundreds of refugees, to hear their tragic stories, first-hand, in their own words. The challenge was to tastefully turn their gruesome, gut-wrenching stories into delicate art pieces through narration and a visual style fitting of their testimony. The campaign uses the lightness of classic children’s stories to undercut the very real, very tragic stories that these children are facing every day. Through a variety of animation styles and across a wide range of different mediums, we were able to engage people all over the world in a new conversation, amplified by coverage on some of the biggest news channels in the world. The campaign was launched at the Syrian Donor Conference with the presence of Malala Yousafzai and the British prime-minister David Cameron, and on CNN International.