Join our school for Syrian refugees and local Lebanese children in Bekaa, Lebanon

  • Favourited 518 times
  • Last activity: 28 Mar 2024

Availability

  2024 

 Min stay requested: 1 month or more

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Details

  • Description

    Description

    Hello everyone!

    I am Yoshi, and I started this project in the Bekaa Valley around 2 years ago. Coming to Lebanon, I realised that many children in the refugee camps cannot attend any schools due to their settlement status, therefore, I decided to begin a grassroots initiative to fill this gap. Making education accessible to all.

    Our education center stands for inclusive education. We aim to provide a safe space where our students, who often have a traumatic background and live in difficult conditions, can learn, play, socialise, and express themselves creatively. Here, we try our best to implement a ‘post-traumatic teaching’ and ‘emotional learning’ approach to our school activities.

    We cherish diversity. Although the majority of our students are Syrian refugees, we have also opened our school to local Lebanese children. Our team consists of 4 local teachers, and a group of volunteers from all over the world.

    Furthermore, we have recently began working on our garden project. A small garden on the rooftop of the school, where we can slowly teach our students about seedlings, the connection with the soil, and environmental programmes. We are also open to using this space to teach breathing exercises and any other activities that can help them better understand and work with their emotions - we would love to hear any possible activities you may have in mind!

    At the moment, our main priorities are the development of our school, as well as the environmental aspect of the project - the garden project as the core initiative, but we’re also in the initial phases of structuring the agricultural side of it.


    Our main goals

    To provide help and assistance to the local community and the Syrian refugee children living in the Bekaa Valley through 2 ways: Education and Gardening.

    1. Education/Schooling

    The focus of the project is currently on the school as we believe that every child deserves an education. We welcome both refugee children living in the tents nearby, Lebanese children as well as children with disabilities.

    Our school schedule is from 8.30am to 12.30pm with a break between where children play outside in the courtyard. Normally, volunteers assist local teachers with their regular teaching schedule in the first half of school time, and after the break volunteers - together with the teachers - create fun educational activities. These can include arts and crafts, particular projects like film or puppet shows, sports, or even a subject like planets, environmentalism, etc.

    Our aim is to provide a safe space and welcoming learning environment for the kids, which is why we all contribute to the common cleaning of classrooms and facilities and try our best to create lovely and warm surroundings throughout the day.


    2. Gardening
    We are currently in the process of reactivating the gardening component of the project as we strongly believe not only in the benefits of gardening for mental and physical health, but also in its potential to face food and nutrition insecurity. Additionally, by growing our own fruits and vegetables, we can contribute to enhance refugees’ sense of dignity, independence, and self-empowerment.

    In the past, we distributed vegetable and flower seedlings to refugee families in the camps. The idea is that by caring about the plants, the families introduce more beauty into the camps, get in touch with nature (which is also meaningful from an educational perspective), may one day grow their own food and in general, improve their home in an organic way.

    At the moment, the gardening project consists mainly on the rooftop where we grow some seedlings of diverse vegetables and flowers. Yet, we wish to enhance the garden component and are currently in the middle of the process of getting a piece of land where we not only want to grow our vegetables and fruits, but where we could also bring the children to teach them about the soil, introduce to gardening and let them take seedlings or even harvest home to their families.

    Who we currently need in particular.

    (Priority will be given to those volunteers applying fitting our current needs. Of course, you are welcome to apply also if you are not completely seeing yourself in the description. Please indicate how exactly you think you can contribute to the project)


    Language Requirements:

    Volunteers who speak English;
    Some level of Arabic knowledge is highly desirable. We mainly speak in English amongst volunteers and local teachers, however, our student’s level of English is extremely low, therefore our communication with them tends to be primarily in Arabic. So, we are trying to give preference to Arabic-speaking volunteers (or at least those that are willing to learn a little!).

    Current needs:

    A gardening expert/lover (with preferably craftsmanship skills): As our current plan is to extend our gardening activities, we need someone who knows how to plant and care for plants, plus has preferably craftsmanship skills as we also would like to expand the rooftop garden and build new vegetable patches/flowerbeds.

    Volunteers interested in carrying out existing (arts/sports/theater/storytelling/etc) projects or already have ideas of their own that they would like to implement.
    Note: Although we accept short-term volunteers (one month), we tend to give priority to long-term stays, as in this way the children (and the project) have a level of consistency with the team; the kids can build a stronger sense of trust, and ideas can be better developed together.

    Fundraiser for those passionate about lots of paperwork and filling out applications. This can also just be fundraising through GoFundMe but as usual, every penny we get is spent in a very valuable way.


    Accommodation


    We have volunteers from all over the world coming in, and many of them return/visit us regularly. But, due to the size of our volunteering house, we can host 4 volunteers at a time.

    Considering the major economic crisis in Lebanon, we share our monthly expenses. Volunteers are therefore asked to contribute 5 USD per day during their stay (a total of 150 USD per month). This amount covers rent, gas, electricity, water, and our shared evening meal.

    Lastly, since the weekends are our time to take a rest, we would appreciate new volunteers to arrive Sunday evening or at the beginning of the week. Thanks for your understanding!

    Get in touch with us in case you have any further questions or would like to be part of our team!

  • Types of help and learning opportunities

    Types of help and learning opportunities

    Charity Work
    Art Projects
    Language practice
    Help with Eco Projects
    Teaching
    Gardening
    Farmstay help
    Creating/ Cooking family meals
    Help around the house
    Hospitality/Tourism
  • UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN sustainability goals this host is trying to achieve

    UN goals
    No poverty
    Zero hunger
    Good health and well-being
    Quality education
    Gender equality
    Clean water and sanitation
    Affordable and clean energy
    Decent work and economic growth
    Industries, innovation and infrastructure
    Reduce inequality
    Sustainable cities and communities
    Responsible consumption and production
    Climate action
    Life below water
    Life on land
    Peace, justice and strong institutions
    Partnerships for the goals
  • Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    Cultural exchange and learning opportunities

    It is a hard work for volunteers to manage classrooms and schools, but some of the volunteers satisfactorily go home with lots of experience and knowledge after working with us.
    Volunteers will surely learn about the community living in the refugees camp. Every time we visit families and distribute the seedlings, people welcome us with their biggest smile and we end up drinking a couple of coffees kindly prepared, as soon as we step inside their house, and that's amazing!
    Sharing stories, problems, experiences, wishes and dreams with the local people is something very meaningful. Then, we realize more about the current situation and start to think of solutions for a better future.
    For those interested in learning Arabic, our local teachers are ready for you!
    Also learning about the gardening techiques through our friend Khajak, who's holding a farm on the mountain. As well, sharing with him some knoweledge about meditation, yoga, breathing techiques etc.

  • Help

    Help

    Ahlan Volunteers, welcome to our projectl. Below is an outline of some reasons you are here:

    Our main purpose of being here is to create a safe, fun and caring environment for everyone. Our school has local teachers who run the 4 main classes, for a total of around 90 kids. We open 5 days a week, 4 hours a day, and teach Arabic, English, Math, and social skills. To understand (or accept that we will never fully understand) the lives of each child that passes through our school but the best we can do is to give them a safe, calm, and attentive place to be. Remember, consistency is important when working with the children, so they always know what to expect.

    Volunteers can support the school with any kind of help, but especially:
    -preparing new activities such as art crafts, and outdoors activities;
    -supporting the local teachers;
    -introducing new subjects if they have any acknowledge about it (such as new languages course, Yoga, Meditation, Psychological support, Gardening, Sports etc..),
    -helping the process of NGO foundation is also very important. Anyone having any knowledge on management, or work with social networks, or simply taking care of fundraising would be great.

    Supporting our fantastic Arab teachers is one of volunteer responsibilities. We do this by printing out work sheets for them, preparing any material they need, asking if they need help during their classes, becoming involved, sitting in on their classes and helping when necessary (this is also a great way to learn each child’s name and learn some Arabic)!
    We are also here to give lessons for the children. Our teachers focus is to help them with Arabic, English and Math so the creativity and active education lies with us. There are plenty of fantastic lesson plans out there, if you look around you can see old activities we have run, Google is also your best friend with fun creative craft projects. There are lots of resources out there, remember to keep it fun and simple.

    A solid timetable should include Arabic, English and Math until 11:30 each day and the last hour we can use to make sure the young people don’t have to focus hard all the way through the day. Normally we rotate physical education, arts and team building classes so we make good use of our space, for example one class might have physical education outside whilst another class has art inside and one class might be doing calming work on the roof.

    Break Time – During the break is an amazing time to bond with the students, learn their names and practice your Arabic. Playing with the students and joining in on their games is fantastic, be careful to keep things fun and easy. Often the students will fight amongst themselves. If you cannot resolve the fight then there will always be an Arab teacher to help out.

    We implement “trauma-responsive teaching” and “social-emotional learning” in our school for supporting our students and communities to get their resilience to deal with their trauma. We have a textbook of it. (it takes a few hours.) It relates to child protection and is important when support students from a refugee camps. So, we want to ask you to read our textbooks before joining us.

    Besides, volunteers can support the agriculture with any kind of help as well, such as:
    -preparing soils in an organic way for our seedlings;
    -preparing seedlings to distribute them to the local community;
    -gardening together with refugees and local people;
    -creating garden space for them;
    -supporting the local organic strawberry farmer.

    Your mindset, mental health and comfort zone is important to take care of. Make sure you talk to the other volunteers what you are comfortable with and what you might not be super comfortable with but still want to try and what you really don’t feel capable of. We are here to support each other!

  • Languages

    Languages spoken
    English: Fluent
    Japanese: Fluent
    Spanish: Beginner

    This host offers a language exchange
    -our local Arabic teacher will be happy to teach Arabic to you and guide you at refugee camps to communicate with people as a translator if you want.

  • Accommodation

    Accommodation

    We have a house with three bedrooms (sometimes shared, sometimes private), a kitchen, and two hammocks settled in the nice and cozy garden where we usually spent most of our free time at.
    We live in Anjar, which is close to the mountain where we do our gardening work and 20 min far from the school (which is in Der Zanoun).
    You can use one of our bicycles to reach the school, the local bus van, or the tuk tuk.

  • What else ...

    What else ...

    chilling at the garden, under tree near our location, trekking, beaching at beirut (we will reach within 70 min).

  • A little more information

    A little more information

    • Internet access

    • Limited internet access

      Limited internet access

    • We have pets

    • We are smokers

    • Can host families

  • Can possibly accept pets

    Can possibly accept pets

    Any kinds pets are welcome, but shall we talk first.

  • How many Workawayers can stay?

    How many Workawayers can stay?

    More than two

  • ...

    Hours expected

    Maximum 5 hours a day, 5 days a week

  • ...

    This host charges a fee

    read more
    $5 a day
Host ref number: 918159743569

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