WSHU: I'm Randy Kaye, and this is Good at Heart, conversations with people who quietly make the world better. Today we're chatting with Dylan Connor, who's a singer-songwriter, teacher, and humanitarian. Dylan heads up the USA chapter of the Kids Paradise Foundation. Dylan was nominated by Joelle Cyr, a former student of his, at Bunnell High School in Stratford, Connecticut. Welcome Dylan,
DC: Thanks so much. I'm thrilled to be here.
WSHU: I'm so glad you're here. Now. I was checking about Kids Paradise. I had never heard of it before, but now I have, and it's wonderful, dedicated to supporting children affected by conflict, poverty and displacement. So I want to know more about that, and we'll start with the first of the five questions I always ask, which is, who do you help and how?
DC: Yes, we help children and mothers in war-torn areas, essentially like Syria and Gaza, and on the borders of Lebanon and Turkey as well, or well into Turkey. Actually, during the Turkey earthquake, we were quite active there, and the idea is that we want to provide sustainable help. So we're not about handing out food baskets and, you know, cash assistance, and it's a one-and-done. There's a place and time for that, but we like to do sustainable help for these people. So, for example, we're currently teaching mothers who are the breadwinners now in their family because they've lost the breadwinner father, husband, due to war. We're teaching them how to work in agriculture and sustain things that way, greenhouse work that can provide for their family, and also learning crafts like how to make toys and things like that that can be sold.
WSHU: So starting businesses and things like that. So this is not a government-funded organization; this is a private organization. So why you? How did this get started, and how did you get involved in it?
DC: So what happened? I want to try to make a long story short here. I married a woman from Syria. I met her. She was going to grad school at the University of Bridgeport. Her name was Reem Hariri. Now, Reem Connor, okay, I'm honored that she took my last name. She's the most wonderful woman in the world, and…
WSHU: It’s very good when husbands feel that we are wives and say so publicly.
DC: We just celebrated 20 years of marriage on November 15. So she had come from Syria, and I married into this family. We visited Syria in 2007 and 2009; it changed my life. Just that kind of worldly travel aspect was given to my life. Through that, I met family members now through marriage, and became very connected to them through my heart and time spent together. And in 2011, of course, there was the Arab Spring and the Syrian revolution. And when our family started being the victims of jailing, torture, violence in the streets, houses, being shelled and things like that, I was blown away. I started writing songs about it.
WSHU: Yeah, tell me about that. You had one song called If Only You'd Listen, which went viral with over 9 million views on Facebook. Now you've written a lot more than that, and you have albums. How does this fit into the picture?
DC: I started writing the songs and putting the songs out online just to say, hey, everybody that I know in America, look at what's going on in Syria. This is crazy. And those videos started to take off and really resonate with people in Syria who were like, wow, there's an American guy who's singing about us. How's this happening? So then I started to be invited to do fundraisers, rallies, things like that, because there weren't many people doing what I was doing at the time. Then, I wanted to go beyond just providing music and go to the ground. So after a while, it wasn't good enough just to go to fundraisers in Chicago or New York or LA. I got invited through my songs to go on a mission to southern Turkey with a group called the Karam Foundation based out of Chicago, in 2014 that was my first mission to the ground, and it changed my life. So it was that moment where you're on the ground with the children you've been advocating for for years, for three years I'd been advocating, and then I'm there with them at a school teaching music.
And we were in this total rubble place that was functioning as a classroom, and over a week, it just did something to me. It was, I would say, very life-affirming and humanizing to be with them and to feel that I was giving something and they were giving me something back, and it was totally exhilarating. It awakened something in me. So then I started to do more of that. And so one day, I'm on the ground in Turkey, and a friend of mine says, Hey, there's this guy, Hasan Almossa. You have to meet him. He's in Rehanli, but he's going to drive three hours over to Gaziantep to meet you. And this was a mutual friend whom I really trust. So this gentleman, Hasan Almossa, meets me at a cafe. He runs a thing called Kids Paradise, and he completely attached himself to me without me asking, and kind of just was my right-hand man, kind of a fixer. And so for two more trips after that, he was my guy, and without ever asking anything in return, the entire time I'm on the ground for a week, he's by my side, facilitating everything. And I just learned that he's the type of guy I trust and have faith in.
WSHU: Kids Paradise, you're heading up the USA part of it. If somebody were to donate money, what would this money do? How would it help?
DC: Well, it would go towards programs that they would choose on the website, so they can choose where to put their donation, or they can do give a general donation, which, if you give a general donation, that's great, because it'll go to, for example, the program to empower women to help their family in a sustainable way that I mentioned before. It could go to our new project, which is a center in Aleppo, Syria. It's a huge center that was just granted by the government to Kids Paradise, and it's going to be a place for wonderful enrichment for children and teens to go. Not to get their academics, but to get like, you know, if they want to learn computer technology or data stuff. That wasn't very eloquent, programming. Or kids want to learn music, and they want to learn about maybe its architecture, things that are enriching. They don't have teachers. They have coaches. It's a wonderful facility. That kind of enrichment program would be something that your money could go towards. It could also go towards emergency relief. So we, you know, respond to emergencies. So in Gaza, we were very active with a soup kitchen type of stuff. Emergency response. Your money could go to if and when that occurs. But for now, building these projects. Now that Syria is accessible with the change of regime a year ago, things have moved rapidly in a good direction for us, providing relief there.
WSHU: So I want to know who inspires you, or you may have already answered that question. Is there a piece of advice or a quote that really sparked you that you'd like to pass on?
DC: Well, in terms of who inspires me, someone like Hasan does, as I've mentioned, but also musicians inspire me. I'm talking about musicians like the one I was named for, Bob Dylan, or John Lennon, or Bob Marley. But I'm also talking about musicians that I know and work with. My friends who've made a full-time life in music, people like Merritt Jacob, who just produced my album, or Drew McKeon, who's been a close friend of mine, who is currently drumming for Seal. Local Westport people who I highly, highly respect, and the list goes on and on.
WSHU: Connecticut's full of musicians and actors, which I love.
DC: They truly inspire me with their excellence. And I'm always trying to get better at what I'm doing musically. So I'm currently back taking guitar lessons again with the same gentleman who taught me when I was 15 years old, Dave Coe, here in Fairfield. So they inspire me. My father inspires me. David Connor is still such a vital artist. He's a painter, a photographer, and a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist, and I think psychotherapist would be the best way to describe him in his profession. Big inspirations to me also the people who stood up for freedom in Syria, especially the ones I'm related to, starting in 2011, like Zaidun al Zawabi, my cousin through marriage, Lamiya al Hariri, who was the ambassador to Cyprus for Syria and defected, out of protest; these people inspire me.
WSHU: Any particular quote that you live by?
DC: Yes, a big one for me is this one on my arm here. Okay, I'm a Latin teacher, and it says Nosce te ipsum, which means Know thyself.
WSHU: Ah, I love that. All I remember is Ubi, ubi sotomeo su ubi. Where, oh where is my underwear? Because I took Latin in high school. Agricola aquaum portat.
DC: Ooh, the farmer is carrying water.
WSHU: Portabot is passing. High school was a long time ago.
WSHU: How can others help you now?
DC: Please go to Kparadise.org/donate. You'll see some options there. That's the best and quickest way you can help by being the president of the US chapter. What I've done is help my board members create a much better hub for Kids Paradise. It's not the legalities and stuff in Turkey, where they were registered before are not like they are in the States. So now we have a 501 (c) (3) status, tax-exempt status. We're really ramping up our visibility and ability to collect money, so that's the way you could help. Also, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone who's listening would follow me on my social media pages, on Instagram, on Facebook, Dylan Connor. Dylan Connor, music, things like that. Dylan connor.com my website, I would love any pair of ears I can get on my music means a lot to me.
RK: Last question, and I get so many different answers to this, but why do you think we're here on earth?
DC: Well, I used to think it was just to love each other, but as this experience through the Syrian revolution, resulting in the crisis, and the huge refugee flow that resulted and being involved in that changed it a bit. I think we're also here to bear witness. I came back from a mission to the border of Jordan and Syria, and I'd seen people dying in the hospital, children, men, with gaping wounds. It's something I'd never seen before. You know, growing up in the bubble of Fairfield, Connecticut, this was another thing. I felt inadequate, and I felt helpless. And when I expressed those feelings to my father, he expressed to me that the importance sometimes is that you can't help, but you're bearing witness. And I took that to heart, and I now see, years later, I think that's part of why we're here. You know, I think we all come from the same source, and we're all witnessing creation from different angles in this life, and so bearing witness is important. I also think that we're here to learn, so that maybe, if there is something after this, we go with some kind of wisdom we've built in our souls. I like to think that we're also here to create. Creation can obviously be multifaceted, whether you're creating through love or you're creating art, or you're creating a house, or you're creating, you know, physical objects or spiritual energy.
This podcast is made possible in part by ProHealth Physicians, along with the members of WSU Public Radio.
