Arriving at my location this morning, there was little evidence of what the inconspicuous entrance in between the seemingly grey, everyday series of shop fronts and apartments actually contained. However, after climbing four flights of stairs I found myself in a hall used as a church, and through a doorway I glimpsed a colourful room decorated with children’s drawings.
This church’s small school project serving 30 children aged 5-12 with basic catch-up education was the venue for our day’s training workshop for an emerging network of churches and small organisations who have initiated small scale informal education projects to meet the needs of the refugee children in their community, many of whom have been out of school for several years.
Gradually the hall filled with more teachers and pastors, Lebanese and Syrian, involved in projects amongst the tents of the Bekaa Valley, the North of Lebanon, the poorest suburbs of Beirut.
While operating on totally different scales and with different approaches, another thing that these projects have in common is that you would never notice their existence if you didn’t know what to look for, or decide to take a closer look. Amidst the statistics of millions of Syrian children out of school, it’s easy to miss these innovative projects which are happening all the time.
This is how I also often think about the beautiful country I find myself in here; news of Lebanon in the media doesn’t tend to be positive. This week’s big news was this image of a ‘river of garbage’ on the outskirts of Beirut, and on travelling into the city with a friend on Friday night and noticing an unexplained plume of smoke, we agreed that we hoped the smoke was from the deliberate burning of a large pile of rubbish (common practice in the current garbage crisis) rather than a less positive explanation.
But piles of rubbish and the risk of explosions aren’t anywhere close to representing the Lebanon I’ve come to know and love, even if there are undeniably many struggles for people here. I’ll always be grateful that I had this opportunity to spend time in this country with continued surprises of unexpected beauty, obvious in the breathtaking first glimpse of the Bekaa Valley laid out underneath the backdrop of mountains, or the winding roads of the north through orchard-villages.
I haven’t always been good at recognising the beauty of Beirut, though.
On my last trip here I deliberately took a long walk across the city and tried to notice what was around me, and I was rewarded by stumbling upon amazingly well-preserved Roman ruins hidden along a street, mosaic floors, elegant buildings, colourful stairways.
It seems there is much beauty there to be seen if we are willing to notice it, even in places and situations which are presented as the opposite.
Today’s education network workshop was on the topic of psychosocial support, and how these churches can help children to cope with the many difficult experiences they’ve been through.
We often think of psychosocial support as meaning the ways we can include specific activities like art, music and sports for children.
But what came across powerfully today was how the quieter, less noticeable work of providing a regular, safe place for children characterised by routine and secure expectations and delivered by people with a consistently loving, encouraging and supportive attitude is perhaps the most significant input that education projects can provide for children affected by conflict. Today we heard stories of transformative change in children’s lives: a child who hadn’t spoken for 18 months, speaking; a child who couldn’t stop being violent towards others, making friends – through regularly being part of these projects, their lives have changed for good, forever.
And this all happens quietly, unnoticed.
So I want to make sure that I deliberately keep my eyes open for the good things that are happening beneath the surface: people, ideas, and initiatives, and get behind them.
That’s the main idea behind the bigger project I’m working on at the moment around finding out what local churches and organisations are doing to help children in emergencies, and helping those who want to partner with them to know how to do it in the best ways they can to make the most difference in children’s lives… and that’s really exciting! Today was a good day.
This week I sat in a tent in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley with a family who fled their homes in Aleppo at the start of the conflict five years ago.
This idea of being disconnected is something I’ve been thinking about recently in terms of my ‘two lives’ in the UK and in Lebanon. I still struggle with each transition, wanting to hold onto the people and the place I am leaving behind, often thinking of what I’m missing out on being part of with the people in the place where I’m not.
On the day I visited the family from Aleppo, I also visited a new project we have started which is providing catch-up education for children right there amongst the tents they are living in. I saw a classroom full of children eager to learn, and a Syrian teacher who (despite the difficulties of managing the behaviour of children who have been out of school for several years) shone with something that looked a lot like peace as he spoke about his sense that what he is doing is something really important; and I believe it is.
kezia here and there 