20/08/2026
What gives someone hope after years of working as a humanitarian?
For the Stanislav Bielik, Country Director of ADRA Slovakia, the answer is surprisingly simple: children. “The looks on the faces of children who don’t understand why they have to suffer, yet still trust us to be the ones who can help them.”
He has seen those same trusting eyes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
It is a powerful reminder this World Humanitarian Day that behind every crisis, every appeal and every statistic are individual human beings. And their needs do not disappear when a crisis leaves our news feeds.
What he also particularly remembers most are the people he met in regions of crisis like in Ukraine:
“The selfless doctors and medical staff who stayed behind to provide assistance to local residents and the wounded.”
Behind humanitarian action are people making choices like these every day — doctors, volunteers, local organisations and humanitarian workers who continue serving people around them in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
On World Humanitarian Day, we remember why protecting them matters. Civilians and humanitarian workers must be protected, international humanitarian law respected, and humanitarian organisations allowed to reach people in need safely.
Humanitarian workers and volunteers continue to show up. Local organisations continue serving their communities. Families continue to rebuild.
For those of us further away, perhaps our part begins by refusing to forget.
Continuing to care. Continuing to support. Continuing to pray.
Because solidarity is more than sympathy from a distance.
📖 In The Moral Courage to Care, Paulo Lopes reflects on what it means to keep caring when the world's attention has moved elsewhere:
https://adra.eu/the-moral-courage-to-care/
