Aid to the Church in Need launches the “Back to School” aid program, which will benefit 30,000 students and more than 6,000 teachers in nearly two hundred Lebanese schools.
In order to make it possible to return to school following the summer holidays, Aid for the Church in Need has launched the “Back to School” assistance program, which will benefit 30,000 students and more than 6,000 teachers in nearly two hundred Lebanese schools. One hundred and eighty-five Christian and Muslim students between the ages of 6 and 18 receive their educational upbringing in regarding 250 Catholic colleges or schools. But due to the terrible economic crisis that Lebanon is going through, many religious groups or parishes that run educational facilities are looking at the return of children with concern regarding returning to school, especially since one in ten left school last year due to immigration or lack of financial resources.
However, Aid to the Church in Need is convinced that the continued Christian presence in Lebanon depends on keeping schools open. “Supporting schools is a major response to the crisis experienced by Lebanese Christians,” explains Alessandro Montedoro, director of Aid to the Church in Need in Italy, following he visited Lebanon personally in recent weeks. In Lebanon, Christian education is mainly taught in schools. Catholicism, not in parishes and therefore if Catholic schools and teachers began to disappear due to lack of financial resources, the demographic balance would change rapidly. Especially since the country’s financial meltdown has made it impossible for many parents to pay school fees. Even semi-private schools are in a very difficult situation, because although they receive theoretical government support, the Lebanese state has not covered the agreed costs for the past four years.
In this context, Philip Osiris, General Secretary of Aid to the Church in Need International, said that many schools have gone bankrupt, unable to pay their teachers’ salaries and struggling to find the means to support themselves. But the greater danger is that Catholic schools will be forced to close, which would be a disaster even in the long run for the coexistence of religions, as these institutions play an essential role in the relations between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon and constitute a model of coexistence for the entire Middle East. Another big problem for many schools, he added, is electricity, which has been malfunctioning for decades. Consequently, Lebanese schools depend on private generators during outages. This was a huge cost before the financial crisis. So the energy crisis is one of the huge obstacles that schools have to face.
The projects covered by the “Back to School” program total $2.28 million, and include: teacher salaries, family grants, assistance for catechists in public schools, assistance for solar panels in schools, grants to purchase materials for students in 89 subsidized schools, and various other projects for schools. It should be noted that the Aid to the Church in Need, which increased its aid to Lebanon following the tragic explosion in August 2020, continues to support the survival and livelihood of Christians in Lebanon, the only Arab country in which they play an active role in society and politics, without forgetting that the country of the Cedars For centuries it has been a haven for persecuted Christians, including Armenians in the twentieth century, and Syrians and Iraqis in the past decade. The Secretary-General of the International Aid to the Church in Need concluded by saying that before 2020, Aid to the Church in Need should have helped Syrian refugees in Lebanon, but now it is the Lebanese Christians who need our help.