Kate Newton, from Bradford, is a Humanitarian Adviser on Syria for the UK government Department for International Development (DFID). She tells the Telegraph & Argus about her work at the forefront of the response to the Syria crisis

IMAGINE being forced to leave your home, your town or even your country. This is the grim reality for millions of Syrian people who are escaping horrific violence while their country is torn apart by civil war.

My life began here in West Yorkshire, but now it is fixed on war-torn Syria – a far cry from Bradford. As a humanitarian advisor on Syria for the UK government, my job involves advising ministers on how the UK can support some of the 18 million people in Syria and the region who are in desperate need of our help.

In March 2012, while working for the United Nations, I went to live in Syria for 18 months. This was a year after the fighting had started and, at this point, many Syrians still had a good standard of living. Today, after nearly five years of escalating conflict, four out of every five Syrians live in poverty.

Millions have been forced to leave their homes, often multiple times. They have been attacked, shot at and even faced danger from chemical weapons. Hundreds of thousands of people are today living in besieged towns where they are being denied food and basic medical care.

Put simply, it’s the biggest and most urgent humanitarian crisis in the world.

By joining the humanitarian team at the UK’s Department for International Development, I have been working at the forefront of the response to the Syria crisis. The UK has pledged over £1.1 billion to Syria and the region since the conflict began - apart from the US, no other country has done more than us. I wanted to be involved in that and help bring desperately needed support to Syrian people.

That’s why we’re hosting the Supporting Syria and the Region, London 2016 conference on February 4. Alongside co-hosts Kuwait, Germany, Norway and my former employers the UN, we are bringing world leaders from around the globe together to rise to the challenge of raising the money needed to help millions of people caught up in the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

As a humanitarian adviser, much of my work has focussed on meeting people’s most urgent needs, such as providing almost 20 million one-month food rations, getting healthcare to the most in need and supporting access to sanitation for over 7 million people. This conference aims to raise significant new funding to continue this work in Syria and the region, but crucially, it will go further – we want to support the longer term needs of those affected by the crisis through jobs and education.

I have spent time in many troubled countries during my career including South Sudan, Afghanistan and Haiti to name a few, but the Syria crisis is perhaps the most harrowing from a personal perspective.

As a young girl at Bradford Grammar School I had immense hope for the future. I went on to Oxford University and, now 41 years-old, have followed my passion by working to tackle poverty. At the moment many children in Syria and the region don’t have these opportunities.

They deserve to have aspirations and hope for the future just as much as children here in West Yorkshire. Without swift action, an entire generation of Syrian children are at risk of being left behind - all because of where and when they happened to be born.

Many Syrian refugees want to stay in the region in the hope that one day they can go back to their homes. But they need to know that they can have a future while they are there - the opportunity to go to work, send their children to school and build a life for their families instead of undertaking a potentially fatal trip across Europe.

Helping thousands of people at the source of the problem, in the likes of Lebanon and Jordan, means that that journey is not their only hope for a future; this is best for them and the best use of Britain’s aid budget.

That’s why with the Syria conference, we are working to ensure that all refugee children from Syria are in education by the end of the next academic year. Getting children into education and adults into jobs will enable people to rebuild their lives so that they can start to look forward again.

Of course one conference alone cannot deliver all the answers, but it will shine a light on the sheer scale of the impact that this conflict is having on affected populations, while offering some hope for the future.