May 2019: news from FAID

FAID’s latest newletter contains updates and many news about their activities with the children:

– Lebanon’s Independence Day celebrated at the Presidential palace with the President and the First Lady

– The First Lady, Ms Nadia Aoun, hosted the launch of FAID’s campaign for early intervention of hard-of-hearing children, with the support of 10 NGOs

– The children were delighted and immensely proud to celebrate the National Flag Day with the Lebanse Army, whose troops hoisted the flag at FAID and whose orchestra played military music

– A vocational training on basic agricolture and food production took place at FAID

– Two special classes were created to meet the needs of students who joined FAID at a relatively late age without previous education

– FAID is piloting an “outreach program” in the settlements of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. It concentrates on educating parents to communicated with and helping their deaf children

– and many other news.

Lebanon Trust features promimently in the newsletter, with many pictures and a description of the work we did at FAID last year: the renovation of the Computer Room and the Earmould Laboratory, scraping and painting walls, windows, railings and doors, replacing the old carpet with a new one; painting and maintenance work on girls’ dormitory playground that we built in 2016, and  a complete clearance of the overgrowth in the garden. Also, we provided a 30-metre net for the playground, to allow the children to play safely and not lose their footballs.

A new life, and hope for the future, for deaf refugee children in Lebanon, thanks to FAID and UNHCR

FAID, the school for deaf children that we help since 2008, hosts 24 Syrian refugees, all deaf. Here they receive an education, are assisted by speech therapists, and – most of all – find a new life and hope for the future. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) supports these children at FAID, as FAID’s Gladys explains in this video. Also, specialists and volunteers from FAID bring their invaluable help to Syrian refugee settlements, thus reaching deaf children who otherwise would not be helped at all. Enjoy the video!

The Irish Examiner: an article about FAID, the Home of Hope and refugee camps that we support

(Credit: Irish Examiner)

A new article on the Irish Examiner, by journalist Victoria White, describes the difficulties of refugee, homeless and special-needs children in Lebanon, with a special focus on The Home of Hope and FAID, that we have been supporting for many years. Ms White spoke with Grace of FAID and Brady of the Home of Hope during her trip to Lebanon earlier this year.

Lebanon Trust’s volunteers with Grace, FAID’s director. We donated them 8000 dollars for their deaf pupils’ speech theraphy.

(tablets and smartphones: best viewed in landscape mode)

Dear friends,

in October this year we went to Lebanon to visit the Institutions we support through your generosity: the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID), two kindergartens for refugees and the Home of Hope, for street and orphaned children.

For the 11th year in a row, we worked at FAID, where we 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 – we 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.

We donated FAID 8000 dollars to finance a speech therapist for their nearly 70 deaf pupils, ranging from kindergarten pupils to teenagers. 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.

This year our team got a great new addition: Emma, from Como in Italy, a tireless worker and always in good spirits. A perfect volunteer!

This year we returned 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.

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!

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 historic 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!

Finances

Income: Donations to Lebanon Trust (Euro)

(Year close Nov 30, 2018; EUR/USD/CHF currency exchange rate: as applied by our bank in Ireland)

Expenditure: Donations to the supported institutions, expenses (Euro)

Accommodation was kindly provided by FAID for free. Most volunteers took unpaid leave from their employers.

Fundraising events organised by the volunteers over the year: Christmas swim, street collections, weekly raffles, cake sales, quiz night, birthday parties, virtual flea market, bucket collections.

Our special thanks to these friends, who helped us this year:

Thank you, Advanced Car Rental!

We have many friends & many people to thank! Advanced Car Rental, thank you for your continued support over the years & your great service! We definitely couldn’t function without your cars! (and without Laura, our fearless driver …)