Join us on the evening of Monday, November 6th as we host Raed Al Saleh, Head of the Syria Civil Defence (the White Helmets) for a talk entitled: A Decade of the White Helmets: Humanitarian Resilience in a Prolonged Crisis.

Under Raed’s leadership, the White Helmets has expanded into a network of almost 3,000 volunteers who have saved over 125,000 lives in Syria. The White Helmets were nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize, received the Right Livelihood Award and InterAction’s 2016 Humanitarian Award. Raed was recognized as one of TIME 100’s Most Influential People in 2017.

Raed is originally from Jisr al-Shughoor, Idlib, in northern Syria. Before the uprising, Raed was a businessman selling electrical equipment. Like many other Syrians, he was forcibly displaced to Turkey when the Syrian regime entered his town in 2011. He returned to Idlib in 2012 and started supporting refugees and internally displaced communities. He attended his first civil defence training course in 2013 and was elected to form a civil defence team in Idlib by his fellow teammates. By 2014 he was responsible for 600 civil defence volunteers in Idlib. He was then elected head of the Syria Civil Defence on its establishment in 2014 and was re-elected in January 2022.