The project came to life when, after several missions to Lebanon, it emerged from our Lebanese partners - Beit Atfal Assomoud and Permenent Peace Movement - that there was a need to revitalise non-formal education in order to boost social cohesion in the country.
That is why we have selected four National Civil Service volunteers, two girls and two boys, who will be working in Lebanon from November 2016 until September 2017, to follow non-formal educational paths dedicated to Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian childrenə.
In Lebanon, where communities belonging to 18 different religious denominations coexist with political parties with often diametrically opposed views, and where one in four people are refugees from Syria, this is not a matter of course. Especially in light of Lebanon's complex education system.
In the Palestinian camps of Shatila and Bourj el-Barajenh, operatorsə will teach English in kindergartens and afternoon remedial classes. They will be engaged in supporting the recreational activities that animate the two centres where Assomoud has been working for 40 years and during the year they will also organise meetings and exchanges with the families of the minors involved in the training activities.
With the Permanent Peace Movement they will participate and organise trainings involving young Syriansə and Lebanese in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. In this case, the complex issue that young people will have to deal with will be mitigating existing tensions between the Syrian community and the host community, supporting the trainers of the partner association.
The project foresees times when the volunteers will be able to take turns in the activities in order to keep in mind the work carried out by the others, but together, already in the first months, they will carry out field research monitored by the Faculty of Peace Sciences in Pisa. Thanks to a series of interviews with representative figures from the educational field, they will investigate the nature and composition of education in Lebanon, the creative aspects and future challenges of non-formal education.
