Lebanon Trust visited a refugee kindergarten in the south of Lebanon

One of our regular appointments when we are in Lebanon is the visit to the kindergarten of the refugee camp di Burj el-Shemali, in the city of Tyre, in the south of the country.  We very much look forward to this, every time. It is a great day that we spend with the children and the teachers. They are all very warm and welcoming, always enthusiastic, motivated and full of ideas and projects.

We all sang songs in English, blew soap bubbles, ate sweets and made a lot of noise. On behalf of our supporters, we left a much-needed donation of 2000 dollars in support of the kindergarten’s activities.  After the children left, the teachers surprised us with a huge Palestinian lunch, which was really delicious! Thank you!

Visit and donation to the kindergarten of the refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut

One day during our trip we went to visit the kindergarten of the refugee camp of Shatila, as we have been doing every year since 2011.  We love this place – despite its really bleak surroundings (a dilapidated and overcrowded refugee camp), the kindergarten is full of joy, colours, laughter and songs. The teachers are all super-motvated and full of energy. The children, aged 3 to 5, learn to read and write in Arabic and English. The classrooms are full of drawings; we added great clouds of soap bubbles, which the children adore.

On behalf of our donors, we gave the kindergarten’s director Mariam a donation of USD 2000 towards the purchase of books and material for those children whose families cannot afford them. Thank you friends and supporters!

Lebanon Trust’s donation to FAID to support speech therapy for the deaf children

Speech therapy teaches deaf people how to speak and lip-read, allowing them to communicate with the wider world and equipping them for a productive future. On behalf of our donors and supporters, we donated 8000 dollars to finance a speech therapist for the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf, which educates nearly 70 deaf children, ranging from kindergarten pupils to teenagers.

A visit and a donation to the Home of Hope

Last week we went to the Home of Hope, an instute that welcomes street children and children with no family. With their Education Director Brady, we visited their place, talked to many of the children and gave them a donation of 2000 dollars for their computer class, where they learn programming and robotics. We also gave them many footballs, donated by O’Neills sport in Dublin.

Lebanon Trust’s volunteers worked at FAID

For the 11th year in a row, the volunteers of Lebanon Trust went to The Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID), where they renovated the students’ Computer Room and the Earmould Laboratory. Removing all the furniture and equipment, scraping and painting walls, windows, railings and doors, replacing the old carpet with a new one, moving the furniture back – our A-team did it all over the course of several days and a weekend, in order not to disrupt the teaching schedule too much.  We also did painting and maintenance work on girls’  dormitory playground  that we built in 2016, and did a complete clearance of the overgrowth in the garden.

The volunteers are back from Lebanon!

We have just returned from Lebanon: six volunteers from three countries spent two weeks in Lebanon, working at The Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf, and visiting and delivering donations also to two kindergartens for refugee children and an institute for street and orphaned children.

Time went fast and the trip was very intense, but we are proud of what we achieved on behalf of our donors and supporters. Thank you all!

Once again, our volunteers are heading to Lebanon

This month, an international group of six Lebanon Trusters will fly to Beirut for the charity’s  annual trip to visit the institutions we support financially, and to do practical work. As every year, we will stay at the Father Institute for the Deaf in the outskirts of Beirut, and do maintenance work there. We will also visit their outreach program in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, where hundreds of thousands Syrian refugee live.

As we have been doing for several years now, we will also visit two kindergartens for refugee children, run by our partner Association Najdeh.  We plan to visit the orphanage Home of Hope as well, which we got to know & supported last year for the first time.

We all look forward to being in Lebanon! Many hearfelt thanks to all the friends who donated and help our charitable projects.

FAID reaches deaf refugees in the mountains of Lebanon

Currently, the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID) in Beirut welcomes about 20 deaf Syrian refugee children. This is as much as they can handle, because getting financial support for Syrian students is extremely difficult. Yet, the need is huge, as Lebanon has taken in about 1 million refugees from Syria.

This is the reason why FAID has created a different, innovative approach to this problem. It is called “Outreach Program” and consists of having 2 special education professionals going regularly to the Zahle region in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where most refugees are. They will provide hearing aids, speech therapy and education, most importantly working with the parents of the deaf children. A special program has been devised to teach parents how to best support their children.

The program is scheduled to start in September 2018, and it will run in collaboration with Salam, which we at Lebanon Trust visited last year.

Lebanon Trust went to visit the Learning Center for the Deaf in Baabda, Beirut

During our recent stay in Lebanon, we paid a visit to  The Learning Center for the Deaf, welcomed by the truly visionary founders Hussein and Nadine. Hussein is the late Father Andeweg’s son. (Father Andeweg was the founder of FAID, the school we have been supporting for 10 years now). The Learning Center for the Deaf is complementary to FAID – it runs an early-intervention programme for deaf babies and their families, and the three years of preparatory  schooling for those who wish to attend university.

Splendidly-run school, Father Andeweg must be proud!

Visit and donation to the children of the Burj el-Shemali refugee camp in Tyre, south Lebanon

Also this year we went to the Association Najdeh‘s kindergarten in the refugee camp of Burj el-Shemali in Tyre, south Lebanon.

The kids are delightful and learn Arabic and English. The teachers and their coordinator are bright and really dedicated. They all make the most of a difficult situation. This is a fantastic place to see. On behalf of our donors and supporters, we left a donation of 2000 dollars. Thank you all!

The kids pay attention during an Arabic class

and learn geometry in Arabic and English, at age 4:

this old minubus takes them home

a view of the refugee camp, and some Lebanon Trust volunteers enjoying a meal on the street

the beautiful fishing port of the old city of Tyre

Lebanon Trust and the kindergarten of the Chatila refugee camp in Beirut

Like every year, we went to the refugee camp of Chatila, in the heart of Beirut, where about 25’000 people – long-term residents and more recent arrivals from Syria alike – live in dire conditions. We visited our friends at the immaculate kindergarten run by the Association Najdeh, where Mariam the supervisor, the teachers and all the children welcomed us with open arms, songs and cheers. On behalf of our donors and supporters, we donated 2000 dolllars.

We are back from Lebanon!

We are back home after a very intense, very successful two-week trip to Lebanon. We worked at FAID, the school for the deaf we have been helping for ten years now, we visited and donated to two refugee kindergartens, and bought 100 pairs of shoes and assorted underwear for street children. We also met many associations and schools doing great work for children and refugees. More news to follow!

Our volunteers’ annual trip to Lebanon

In early November we will leave for Lebanon once again, for our annual support trip to FAID, the school for deaf children in Beirut that we support since 2008, and to two kindergartens for refugee children in Beorut and Tyre (south Lebanon).

We have many projects to complete and a lot of work to do. All support more than welcome!