Meet Little Amal – the not-so-little puppet of a 9-year-old Syrian girl who is walking 5,000 miles from Turkey to the UK.

The journey represents the stories of the millions of young refugees who are forced to leave their homes and often travel alone without their parents.

Designed as part of a project aimed at raising awareness of the difficulties faced by child refugees, the nearly 12-foot-tall puppet will cross the border of eight countries.

Amal means “hope” in Arabic.

She’ll be moving from Turkey to Greece, then Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and finally the UK where Little Amal’s journey will end in Manchester on 3 November.

Look, here she is in my most favorite spot in Paris: the gardens of the Palais-Royal. Had I known she’d be there, I would have gone to see her and take photos.

The giant puppet was made by the same people who worked on the horse puppet for the theatre production of War Horse.

Called The Handspring Puppet Company, it takes a total of four puppeteers to animate Little Amal: one for each arm, one for her back, and one actor inside her body, walking on stilts and also operating a contraption called “the harp,” a complex system of strings that control the puppet’s facial expressions.

The Handspring Puppet Company’s founders, Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler even came out of retirement to create it.

“The refugee story is the big issue of our time,” said Kohler.

(text taken from the BBC website)

The Guardian has beautifully documented (with photos) the overland voyage of Amal from her starting point in Turkey to …. well, I’m not quite sure where she is right now, somewhere in England heading north up to Manchester. Here’s the link here. Take a look –

https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/oct/20/amals-journey-the-puppet-that-crossed-europe-in-pictures#img-1