Magician Dynamo has said giving children a proper education is “the closest thing to giving a child the power to do real magic”.
The TV star and performer also called on Theresa May to make time in her diary to meet him to discuss the lack of education for children in Syrian refugee camps.
Dynamo, whose real name is Steven Frayne, recently travelled to Lebanon to visit refugee camps ahead of releasing a video as part of a charity campaign with Theirworld aimed at trying to help get half a million Syrian refugee children into education.
Please watch the full video and retweet. #YouPromisedhttps://t.co/KGORtBftBw
— Dynamo (@Dynamomagician) April 18, 2018
He told the Press Association: “Give a child an education and they can grow up to become anything, it allows them to fulfil their dreams and gives them ambition and it allows them to potentially change the world for positive reasons”.
The video has been shared on social media by celebrities including actor Will Poulter, English rock band Kasabian and many more.
The magician also recently spoke of his health battles over the last few months, which saw him develop arthritis and unable to do magic tricks.
The star was hospitalised due to a bout of food poisoning combined with his Crohn’s disease and developed arthritis as a side effect.
— Dynamo (@Dynamomagician) April 5, 2018
He said his trip last month to Syrian refugee camps had forced him to realise “there are bigger issues in the world”.
“There’s a difference between living and just surviving and that’s what a lot of them are doing, they’re surviving and their resilience under the circumstances is incredible, they literally are living like no one should have to live,” he said of the refugee camps.
He continued: “You’ve got these children roaming the camps with nothing to do, they don’t have the opportunity to get into school, they don’t have anything to do in the daytime, their families can’t really provide much for them, so they’re kind of just stuck there, just surviving”.
We took @Dynamomagician to a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon to meet some of the 600,000 children left out of school without hope of a brighter future. Share this film now to remind world leaders of the promise they have broken. #YouPromised pic.twitter.com/PvTDlvW9HY
— Theirworld (@theirworld) April 18, 2018
Next week he will travel to Brussels to present world leaders with a petition calling for them to fulfil a 2016 commitment to get every refugee child educated.
He said: “Going out to Lebanon and seeing these children, there were literally hundreds of children hanging around with nothing to do and no school to go to.
“I just thought, these children are being wasted and if we don’t create a mechanism for them, to go to school and get educated and do something positive with their lives, then they’re going to get taken advantage of.”
Asked what he would like to say to the Prime Minister, he said: “Ask her if she wants to meet me next week when I’m out at the conference, because I want to speak to her about getting these Syrian children into school.”
Dynamo said he will return to his magic for tours later this year, adding: “Right now my main focus with magic is just to get my health in as good condition as possible. Obviously I’m still battling with certain issues. Hopefully by the time my tours come around I’ll be in a good place.”
He said he had been working on new magic tricks so “when I do come back, I’ve got fresh, new, magic”.