Our projectsWhat we do in Lebanon |
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Lebanon Trust’s work focuses on children and children’s institutions in Lebanon, by providing practical work and financial support.
Currently Lebanon Trust supports
- the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID), in Beirut;
- two kindergartens for refugee children, in Beirut and in Tyre (South Lebanon);
- and the Home of Hope, an orphanage in Beirut.
1. How we support the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID):
Lebanon Trust helps FAID financially, according to its needs. We help pay for the classroom’s heating in winter (winters in Lebanon are cold!) and for the school bus, thus ensuring that kids can attend classes. Or we finance a speech therapist, who teaches the deaf children how to speak.
In Lebanon education is not compulsory, and there is no free medical care. This means that in many cases children who are deaf – but otherwise like all other kids – would not be educated or helped in their deafness.
They would not learn how to speak or to understand others. Their fate would be an existence of extreme poverty and isolation, of begging, or worse.
FAID educates these children and, most importantly, teaches them to lip-read and to speak. In short, FAID gives them the chance to lead a normal life and to find a job to support themselves.
The Institute is on a very tight budget, and we at Lebanon Trust want to help educating these disadvantaged children.
Click here for more details about FAID and how it functions.
2. How we support the kindergartens in two refugee camps in Lebanon:
Lebanon Trust wants to help creating a better environment for the refugee children. We raise funds to contribute to the maintenance of two kindergartens’ buildings and facilities and to provide toys and learning material to the children.
The Chatila refugee camp in Beirut was established in 1949 by the Red Cross, devastated in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and targeted during the Lebanese civil war.
The camp hosts about 22000 refugees (2017 figures), in less than 1 square kilometer. The population has more than doubled since the war in Syria began. Men try to find work as casual labourers, women as cleaners. The housing and infrastructure conditions are extremely bad. Shelters are damp and overcrowded, with open drains. Running water, electricity, garbage collection are a scarce luxury. These conditions often drive families to extreme frustration and despair.
The Burj el Shemali refugee camp near Tyre (population: 21000), in the South of Lebanon, was established in 1948 to provide tented shelter for refugees from Hawla and Tiberias in northern Palestine. The camp also houses displaced Palestine refugees from other parts of Lebanon. The camp suffered a great deal of damage during the years of civil conflict and much work still needs to be done to improve the infrastructure. The current situation is made even more difficult by the influx of hundreds of refugee families from Syria.
The UN provide most of the services in the refugee camps, including schools, but generally not kindergartens.
The kindergartens in the Chatila and in the Burj el Shemali camps have been created by a local association called Najdeh, which runs kindergartens in several other camps.
Refugee children’s lives are dominated by deprivation, violence and destruction. Najdeh’s programmes target these conditions, as well as involve parents and families.
Lebanon Trust currently raises funds in favour of the two kindergarten, to provide the children with better infrastructure, safer playgrounds, learning material as well as toys.
See here for more details about the Chatila and the Burj el Shemali kindergartens and the Association Najdeh.