Unfortunately Syrian refugees are still fleeing for their lives and afraid of what the future might bring them.

“12 million Syrians have fled their homes because of conflict; half are children” explains WorldVision.org.

According to the website’s Fast Facts page, those children have lost everything. They’ve lost their home, their friends and their schooling, yet here we are, living our everyday lives, not doing much at all to help these people.

“More than 200,000 people have been killed in the four-and-a-half-year Syrian civil war” comments NYTimes.com.

So what are we doing to help these refugees? How will we make sure we can get them to safety and fix their home country’s situation?

One of the biggest problems we have when coming up with a solution is the lack of knowledge that the population has on the topic.

Brock Brown, a senior at Palatine, shared what he knew about the war.

“I know that the Islamic state in Syria isn’t very happy with the way things were being run by the people in that one party so they gained funds from supporters and rose to power and tried to overrun the government and force their methods on the people” says Brown.

Brown has some knowledge on the topic, but when asked how many he thought had died in this whole ordeal he was quite off.

“I feel like probably around 10,000 have died” says Brown.

After he was told that over 200,000 have died he was shocked.

“That’s a lot more than I thought, I had know idea there were that many” explains Brown.

Claire Stevens, another Palatine senior, had a similar reaction to the large number of Syrians who have been killed.

“I of course feel sadness and sorrow but also frustration mainly because it’s a complicated issue and I don’t really know what the answer is. I’m also angry and confused as to how horrible people can be” says Stevens.

The students of Palatine High School have an idea of what’s really going on in Syria and with the refugees and want to help make a difference, but don’t exactly know how to go about doing so.

When the students were asked what they were doing to help the refugees, they couldn’t really come up with a list of things they were doing to help.

“Not much, but that’s partially because I’m kind of stuck. There’s not a lot I can do besides raise awareness, promote letting the refugees into america and fighting Islamaphobic culture” says Stevens.

Students have a general clue about what is going on in the Syrian Civil War and a desire to help the refugees, but they don’t exactly know how to. This shows progress.

Back in September, students didn’t really have much of an idea about what was going on, nor did any of them want to help, but now with the large amount of coverage that the Syrian struggle is getting, people are made aware and want to do something about it.

Recently, politicians and other government officials have spoken out about the refugees and how they feel about letting them into America.

President Obama spoke out about this crisis just days ago and said that America will be taking in 85,000 more refugees while 10,000 of them will be able to bring their relatives along. This is great news for our suffering refugees.

While Obama brings a promise of good news for the refugees, president Rauner, along with many other republican governors is putting a stop to allowing refugees into Illinois, for now, that is.

There is hope that governor Rauner will soon let more refugees into Illinois, but for now other states of the United States remain open for the 85,000.