Lebanon

Refugee Youth Project works with local partners to provide educational and leisure activities for Palestinian children in Al-Bass camp in Sour, southern Lebanon.

Background

Al-Bass camp is located in Sour in the south of Lebanon. Over 10,000 Palestinian refugees live in Al-Bass camp, as well as many poor Lebanese families. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) the camp suffers from poverty, unemployment and a lack of infrastructure. There is no designated space in the camp for children to play safely, nor many opportunities for children and young people to access organised activities outside formal school.

Lebanon has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees who are living in abject poverty and who are registered with UNRWA’s “special hardship” programme. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon face serious problems. They do not have social or civil rights, and have very limited access to the government’s public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA as the sole provider of education, health and relief and social services.

Refugee Youth Project in Lebanon

Since our formation in 2004, we have been running annual educational and recreational activity and human rights projects for young Palestinian refugees in Al-Bass refugee camp. Our projects are run in partnership with an independent Palestinian NGO, the National Association for Vocational Training and Social Service (NAVTSS), through its local Vocational Training Centre (VTC) in Al-Bass camp.

NAVTSS is an independent social, educational and cultural institution established in Lebanon in 1983. Its work aims to combat illiteracy, poverty and disease, helping young men and women in their career choices. It achieves these aims through having Vocational Training Centres in many refugee camps in Lebanon. The Vocational Training Centre in Al-Bass is one of our partner organisations.

Over five years, our expertise and involvement with refugee youth in Al-Bass have grown, reflected by the increasing number of beneficiaries each year and oversubscription to our projects. The project facilitates leisure, skill-building and literacy support sessions for children and young people aged between six and fourteen years-old during the summer holidays. On two occasions we have received sufficient funding to expand our summer activities into weekly term-time educational support sessions run throughout the scholastic year.

We work closely with a local disability support agency (the Sour Community Disability Project) to enable our project to be fully inclusive as opportunities for disabled and non-disabled children to play together are severely limited in the camp. In this respect, our project is the only one of its sort.

Our last project evaluation in November 2009 highlighted the very positive contribution RYP’s work has had on both the young people and the community at large. Children who were interviewed at the project-end said that they felt “safe and happy” that an organisation led by twelve trained and experienced Youth Workers that they trusted was providing activities for them during the summer.

There were many requests from children and their parents for the project to be resumed in 2010. Parents emphasized that the RYP-VTC project was the only one that covered both education and leisure (as opposed to the others who only cover fun activities). Parents also drew attention to the lack of educational provision in the camp, particularly regarding English language. As formal UNRWA education is conducted through the English language it was felt that the RYP-VTC project is significant because it provides English language support in the summer holidays.

Representatives of the Steering Committee – the democratic advisory committee that consists of parents, children, teachers and representatives of local NGOs – felt that the RYP-VTC project was the best of all such activities in Al-Bass because it is inclusive of disabled children, it is popular amongst the camp community, it supports formal education and promotes literacy, and brings a sense of community spirit to the camp.