LRC, UNICEF AND EU BRINGING THE CHILDREN OF SYRIA AND LEBANON TOGETHER

The Lebanese Red Cross held a Child and Youth Festival in four locations across Lebanon as part of a project supported by UNICEF and funded by the European Union in Batroun where around 2,500 children came together to play and learn. David Dakkor, a Red Cross volunteer who is part of the team coordinating the event, says that this festival might be the first time many Lebanese children meet Syrian refugee children in person “this festival is part of a larger project aimed at fostering understanding and promoting integration.” Bringing communities together in events like this allows children from both communities to play together, form friendships and learn about each other.

The event was part of a larger program aimed at equipping Lebanese and Syrian youth with the tools to take care of their own mental and physical wellbeing, and further, empower them to help peers in their community with similar issues. More than 18,000 children and teens all across Lebanon have been targeted by the program, with around 1,200 in each of the ten qadas trained as peer educators.

For Lama Kawtharani, project coordinator for the Red Cross‘ Youth Program, the festival was another milestone in more than a year of work on the group‘s ABC project - Adolescents Benefiting Communities. “We have a Syrian crisis that we are all too aware of, and we are facing a lot of discrimination,“ she said with a sigh. “This sort of thing is aimed at increasing the youth‘s life skills in a non-formal way and educating them in order to help them benefit their communities and society.”