At 3.5 meters (12 feet) tall and with a carbon fiber head full of dark braids, huge, questioning eyes and a love for Turkish delights, Amal is a puppet with a plan: She is on a 10-million-step journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to the United Kingdom, with the hope of uniting with her mother.

The giant puppet, who portrays a 9-year-old Syrian refugee, is the heart of an international traveling art and culture festival that aims to draw attention to the plight of the refugee children as the Syrian civil war and the resulting global refugee crisis reach the 10th-year mark.

“This 10-year war has cost Syria’s young people their childhoods, but the world should not allow it to rob them of their future,” Jeremy Stoner, the Middle East regional director for Save the Children, said last month as the nongovernmental group unveiled a report, “Anywhere but Syria.” The report, based on interviews of over 1,900 displaced children and their caregivers inside and outside of Syria, found that two in five of those surveyed say they face a lack of education, discrimination and a lack of connection to the local community. Many feel they have no say over their future, the report said.

Just like the path of the Syrian refugees it aims to portray, the path of Amal has been slow and uncertain. “Many of you know that we wanted to start Amal’s journey in April,” Stephen Daldry, producer of The Walk project, said in a zoom press conference on May 11. Under the original plan, Amal would pass through approximately 80 villages, towns and cities in Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK between April and July. Her journey of 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) was scheduled to end at the Manchester International Festival in July, where she would be the centerpiece of a large public event had lockdowns across Europe not intervened.