Warning that the entire region was “going backwards in development terms”, Founder and CEO Dr Terence Ascott pointed to a series of grim statistics that underline the crisis across the Middle East right now.

Terrible events, such as the recent Manchester Arena bombing and the Grenfell Tower inferno in West London, claimed the lives of young and old. How to help children come to terms with such incidents, how to comfort and reassure them is a question many parents will have had to answer.

On Sunday morning a bomb ripped through the Palm Sunday Communion Service at St George’s in Tanta in Egypt, killing 27 and injuring many more. It was followed shortly afterwards by a suicide bomber detonated outside St Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria where Pope Tawadros, the leader of the Coptic Church, had led worship.