A heartfelt plea on social media left a young Kiwi backpacker flooded with donations for the stranded swarm of refugees in Budapest.

New Zealand needs to do more to help the refugee crisis in Syria, Labour spokesman for Foreign Affairs David Shearer says.

Michael Woodhouse says refugees will be screened and those in polygamous marriages or who were directly involved in the conflict in Syria will not be taken by NZ.

Syrian refugees Lilas and Basal Slik have been sleeping soundly this year for the first time in their lives.

What drives a father to pay a king's ransom to secure a space on a leaky, overcrowded boat for his daughter?

Today the Herald restarts its campaign The Forgotten Millions to help refugees from the Syrian crisis.

Rachel Smalley is set to return to the Middle East this year as she continues to spread awareness and raise money for the growing refugee crisis.

Campaign to raise money for the forgotten victims of the Syrian crisis raises four times what was hoped for.

A few years ago Damascus was a place of calm in a violent region.

"As I write to you, I feel so much sadness because you stayed behind in Syria on your own. You are far away and the war in Syria has grown distance between us."

Sometimes Fatma's granddaughters want to talk about their old life in Syria. They lived in a nice house in Aleppo and went to school every day.

I first met Reverend Harold Good eight years ago in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Spare a thought for our Prime Minister. The price of "club" membership is to take New Zealand into a war not of our making, training troops who were once our enemy.

He looks downwards and shakes his head in response to my question, "What do you hope for?"

World Vision chief executive Chris Clarke travelled with broadcaster Rachel Smalley to the Middle East to meet some of the millions affected by the Syrian conflict, and was struck by the number of fathers having to make impossible choices for their families.

Nareen and her daughter almost died after jihadists trapped Yazidi refugees.

The school bus lurches to a halt outside a Bekaa Valley primary school in the east of Lebanon.

The Syrian conflict is one of several emergencies World Vision is responding to.

Five top Kiwi artists have donated works for a fundraising auction inspired by a project that uses art to help Syrian children cope with the trauma of war..

The memories and the sound of war can never be forgotten but help when working with refugees, writes Rachel Smalley.

Many Syrians in refugee camps across the border in Lebanon were lawyers, teachers, dentists, accountants. As the conflict enters its fifth year they have become the forgotten millions.

One day, he was a dental surgeon. The next, he was held at gunpoint and thrown in a cell, where he watched the other prisoners shot one by one. Ashour tells his story.

Political unrest. Conflict. The collapse of the country's social infrastructure. And then a daily struggle just to stay alive. An artists has imagined what it would look like in NZ.

Mustafa was standing outside his home in Aleppo when the jet flew over. He has no memory of what happened next but he regained consciousness many days later.

Mustafa was standing outside his home in Aleppo when the jet flew over. He has no memory of what happened next but he regained consciousness many days later in Turkey.

For refugees, possessions are few and far between but there is still plenty that they treasure. Photographer Jo Currie captured these precious fragments.

World Vision's Dominica Leonard travelled with Rachel Smalley to the Middle East to meet Iraqi and Syrian refugees for our Forgotten Millions campaign. Here she tells the story of three young children who stole her heart in the midst of a refugee camp in

Zeinab is in the throes of puberty. She is 14 years old, Syrian, and a wife.

Broadcaster Rachel Smalley finds she has a lot in common with struggling mothers who are caring for children in a conflict zone.

Broadcaster Rachel Smalley meets a refugee of the Syrian conflict whose 5-year-old daughter was taken when an Isis convoy arrived in her village.