Working as a humanitarian photojournalist I spend my life boarding aircraft taking me to far-flung destinations documenting the suffering of refugees and internally displaced people alike. It seems that everywhere I turn there is so much suffering – Gaza, Syria, the Rohingya – and it seems so hopeless. I am struggling to find answers to make sense of it all in every frame I capture. 

I stand in these camps with my cameras draped over my tired shoulders, notebook and pencil in hand, among the residents whose eyes haunt me imploring me to take their portraits and convey their suffering to the world. It seems to be getting harder and harder to show any glimmers of hope. I am longing to find that sense of lightness that I need to remind me that I can effect change through my work and that a brighter future is possible for those people I meet.

I am finally rewarded when Education Above All (EAA), a foundation founded by HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar, invites me to document their work and meet 11-year-old Sara, a Palestinian-Syrian refugee from the Kab Elias municipality of Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. She is a beneficiary of the Educate A Child (EAC) programme, and it is my time with this wonderful girl that provides me with the lightness I have been searching for and the understanding that the most powerful tool we have to transform livelihoods is education.