Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind "Humans of New York," recently traveled to Jordan and Turkey to talk to 12 different Syrian refugee families preparing to embark to the United States. Stanton met them at a highly emotional moment, at the end of an intense screening process that lasted multiple years.
Stanton has told their stories in the classic "HONY" style: kids' comical quips mixed in with more serious anecdotes about what life has been like for these refugee families.
It's grabbing the attention of not only HONY's more than 16 million Facebook fans, but also high-profile followers like President Obama and actor Edward Norton, who has already raised more than $300,000 for one of the refugees featured in the series.
Ahead, see 20 of the most hard-hitting memories and moving moments that Stanton has recorded and shared.
(Captions written by Humans of New York)
SEE ALSO: 15 unforgettable portraits from the 'Humans of New York' photographer's trip to Pakistan
Istanbul, Turkey
"I want to be a professor that examines the bones of dinosaurs because I like dinosaurs a lot. I also want to have a dinosaur, but I know that’s impossible. I love to go to Google and type: 'Nice dinosaur movies.' But that uses a lot of the phone, so I don't get to do that too much. One day I'm going to open a museum full of dinosaur bones. I'm not sure where I'll find the bones. Probably America and France."
"Look at this invention we made. We've made a lot of inventions. You can make really good things out of stuff you don't need. We made an alien out of a speaker that we found in the trash, and then we made a person out of milk cartons, and we turned our trash can into a dinosaur because I love dinosaurs."
Istanbul, Turkey
"When I was in second grade, our school got attacked by a bomb. It was a barrel full of explosions. We were just opening our books to start the class, and it's hard to describe the sound, but it was like a building coming apart."
"I ran to the other class to find my brother, and he was crying because of the sound. Our bus left, so we didn’t know what to do. But my brother is so smart. He ran to the market and called our grandma."
Istanbul, Turkey
"I was at home when the telephone rang. It was my mother. She told me that there had been a bomb at the boys' school. I immediately tried to call the school, but nobody answered. Then I tried to call the bus driver but he didn't answer either. I imagined the worst. The roads were closed, so I couldn’t get to the school."
"All I could do was pace around the house. Finally the bus driver answered the phone and said that everyone was alive. The bomb had landed on the playground and only destroyed one wall of the school. After several hours the roads were reopened, and they came back home. When I hugged them, it felt like the whole world was in my hands."
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