Ali Harb is 23 years old and is majoring in marketing. LFT began to support him for the fall 2009 semester, which was his last semester before graduation. Ali graduated with good marks and was advised to study for his master’s degree. In the highly competitive Lebanese job market, this would greatly increase his chances to find a well-paying job, and Ali desperately needs such a job because he is the only grown son in a family of seven:
Faraj Ali Awada is 49 years old and has a wife and three children. He and his family live in the village of Ain Sonoon al-Wadi near the town of Kaifoon in the Lebanese mountains in a house they inherited from their grandfather.
Most countries of the world take good care of their soldiers. In Lebanon, this is not the case. Lebanese soldiers receive a pay that is only slightly above the minimum wage. They must pay taxes just like everybody else, their working hours are long and arduous, their work is dangerous, pay raises are few and far between and they are forbidden from taking second jobs.
“I am feeling more and more humiliated, in front of the people who I beg to help me and in front of my son who needs me now more than ever and I cannot help him” Afif JAWAD – Father
Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children, Gaza.
Students Supported by the Lady Fatemah (a.s.) Charitable Trust.
LFT Donors it cost ONLY US$ 100.00 per month per child
After the July 2006 war in South Lebanon, LFT Lebanon launched a project to assist physically and mentally disabled children in this part of the country. Currently, there are more than 400 known cases of childhood disability in the Nabatiyeh area alone, with causes ranging from war injuries to various diseases.
Ali Harb is 23 years old and has majored in marketing. Ali’s father Mohammad had lost most of his capital when his farm was destroyed in the July 2006 war. After opening a small grocery store, he earned barely enough to provide basic necessities for his family of seven and was unable to pay for Ali’s university education.
After the July 2006 war in South Lebanon, LFT Lebanon launched a project to assist physically and mentally disabled children in this part of the country. Currently, there are more than 400 known cases of childhood disability in the Nabatiyeh area alone, with causes ranging from war injuries to various diseases. Most of these children come from the most vulnerable strata of Lebanese society. Their families live in poor and disadvantaged areas. Many families have lost their original homes.......
Abdallah’s father had spent all his savings on a series of surgeries that would enable Abdallah to at least use leg prostheses. When the child was finally ready, his father learned that his prostheses would cost no less than 10,000 Euro, an amount completely out of his reach. Desperately, he applied for assistance to any charitable organization he could think of but the answer was always negative. Until the day he applied to LFT Lebanon. After getting a second medical opinion that confirmed the medical reports from Lebanon, LFT headquarters immediately took steps to provide Abdallah with legs.
Father Ali Hamza is the son of simple farmers. As was customary when Ali was young, he discontinued his education to enter the work force and marry at the age of 22. When Ali’s children arrived, he vowed that all of them would study as long as they wanted.
Ali Chouman is one of the first educational cases LFT Lebanon accepted for support. In 2007, the LFT team indentified the first-year telecommunications engineering student as a deserving case and made the commitment to support him until graduation.
Ali Harb is 23 years old and has majored in marketing. Ali’s father Mohammad had lost most of his capital when his farm was destroyed in the July 2006 war. After opening a small grocery store, he earned barely enough to provide basic necessities for his family of seven and was unable to pay for Ali’s university education.
since the civil war began in 1975, Lebanon remains in a continuous state of unending and bloody conflict. As with most conflicts the unstable political, security and economic situation has hit people across the board, especially those who live in underprivileged conditions. Abject poverty, exposure to malnutrition and diseases, high levels of unemployment and absence of social services, underlines a situation without any hope for a better future.
Ismael Al-Bihisi is currently in his second year in the Islamic University studying English language. He lives with his family of 9 members – his parents, 4 brothers and 3 sisters – in a house consisting of two bedrooms a living room, kitchen and toilet. The house is lightly furnished with only the basic of furniture.
Education Support to Zeinab Hijazi, Lebanon
2010-02-06
Project Achievements and Realized Progress. Like thousands of employees all over the world, 53-year-old Afif Hijazi returns home from work every night to have dinner with his family. A typical family dinner contains of some lentil soup – the lentils having been given to the family by a friend - , some boiled eggs and baked potatoes. Meat is a rare delicacy on the family table.
Education Support to Rayan Ammar, Lebanon Dear LFT donors: Please, assist Rayan Ammar, his family and his community to build a better future for themselves.
2010-01-03
Project Achievements and Realized Progress. Mohammad Ammar was not only a capable and successful chemical engineer; he also was a man who had big dreams and a big heart. When he married 16-year-old Kifah in 1980, he encouraged his young bride to continue her education and obtain a university degree, something very unusual for a married woman, however young, at the time. For most of his married life, he worked abroad. During this time, he had three sons, Ali, Ahmed and Rayan. In 2000, he returned home. Together with his brothers, he established a factory that produced medical and commercial mattresses, an innovative and hence very promising business in Lebanon at the time.
Education Support to Sayed Hussein F Hashem, Lebanon
2010-01-01
Lebanese society has developed significantly in less than 30 years. Many middle-aged people have not received the education that would enable them to cope in the fiercely competitive Lebanon of today. Most of them realize that it is too late to change things for themselves, and that they have just to carry on with their lives and try to manage best as they can. However, all of them also realize that they have to struggle to provide their children with the only tool that will offer them a fair chance in life: A decent education. One of them is Seyyed Fawzi Hassan Hashem, of Kfar Joz, Nabatiyeh, South Lebanon. Seyyed Fawzi is 40 years old and a baker, providing fresh tasty bread to the families of his village every day. While owning a bakery provided a fairly secure existence in the past, and Fawzi’s father probably imagined that he provided well for his son, due to the rising cost of living and especially of education, Fawzi’s bakery no longer provides the income he needs to cover the essential needs of his family of five.
Education Support Success story – Giving a Future to Fatimah Abd El Hadi Chouman - Nabatieh, South Lebanon
2009-12-31
Project Achievements and Realized Progress. Fatimah Chouman lost her father when she was four years old. She was the youngest child of a family of four that was left behind after the death of Abd al-Hadi Chouman: Abd al-Hadi’s wife Khadijah, then 30, and her three daughters: Nadine (then 10), Hamda (then 5) and Fatimah. Despite the anguish, poverty and sense of loss she endured during her childhood, Fatimah has come a long way: Today, she is studying to become a computer technician and working part-time in order to pay for her tuition. Until recently, she was looking forward to her graduation that is only a year away. However, it seemed that the disaster of her childhood has finally caught up with her: Fatimah’s mother Khadijah, who had worked as an agricultural labourer for many years to provide for her girls and put them through school to honour the wish of her late husband and realize her own hopes for a better future for her girls, has recently been diagnosed with a severe chronic disease.
43-year-old Mohammad Bazzi from a small village in South Lebanon made it into the daily news broadcast one day three years ago. However, it was not because of some exceptional achievement, but because he had stepped on unexploded ordinance that day and filming him as he was taken from the ambulance into the emergency ward of the hospital served to highlight the issue of landmines and unexploded ordinance that litter the Lebanese landscape. The Minister of Health appeared in the same news broadcast and promised that the ministry would pay the medical expenses of the victims. That was the only benefit Mohammad derived from being filmed. No cameraman was around when he was discharged with both his legs amputated, no cameraman followed him to the old house he lives in and no cameraman is there to record the daily misery of his life.
28th Microfinance Project success story – Securing a Family’s future in Nabatieh, South Lebanon - Dear LFT donors: With your donation, you restore stability and dignity to the life of this family.
2009-11-21
With the car completely out of order, Mostapha and his family faced a situation of moderate expenses but ZERO income. LFT became acquainted with Mostapha’s family during its mapping exercise for the Ramadhan Food Basket project. So old was their house, which Mostapha inherited from his father that LFT team members wanted to pass by it, assuming that no one lived there. However, Mostapha and Sabah emerged and asked the team to enter and hear their story. It quickly became obvious to the LFT team that offering an essential solution to the family’s problems was beyond LFT’s means. However, it was definitively possible to at least restore Mostapha’s earning ability to its former level.
27th Microfinance Project success story – Securing a Family’s future in Nabatieh, South Lebanon
2009-10-31
“Ali Kolkas is 45 years old and has six children.” Even this summary sentence causes the reader to imagine that he has a hard life. The reality of Ali’s life, however, is much harder than anyone could imagine: Ali married young. He was only 19 years old when he tied the knot with his wife Zainab. The first great tragedy also came early in his life: Zainab passed away after only a few years of marriage shortly after the birth of her second daughter, Ola, today 21 years old. Ali married again and his second wife bore him four sons, who are now between 17 and 7 years old. All six children are still studying.
26th Microfinance Project success story – Securing a Family’s future in Nabatieh, South Lebanon
2009-10-30
LFT Lebanon as part of its ongoing strategy to provide income generating opportunities for identified vulnerable members of society recognized a devoted and devout father who would benefit from a grant. Hussein Banout has five children and a wife who he had been supporting up until 2008 with decently paid job with an international sport goods company, and so he was able to build a house for his family and ensure his children received a decent education.
2009 Ramadhan Iftar Project in Lebanon 474 Villages with 1,783 people were assisted
2009-10-23
LFT Lebanon’s annual food distribution project has two aims: to provide families with a balanced nutrition during the holy month of Ramadhan and to draw a smile on the faces of children in need. In 2008, the project was able to supply Food Baskets to 150 families in 21 villages in the Nabatieh Casa of South Lebanon. In 2009, however, LFT-Lebanon expanded the project to include 47 villages and benefiting 473 families with 1,813 members. This means an about three-fold increase in the number of beneficiaries, an increase that was possible due to the great generosity of LFT’s donors and the untiring efforts of LFT Lebanon staff members.
This year, Ramadan started at the beginning of new school year, so Atfaluna admin. team ,in coordination with school principal and social workers, decided to use this money to provide some families of poor students with food parcels. In addition, provide 150 students with school uniform. The attached list includes 150 beneficiaries of school uniform and food parcels; the names marked in red are related to beneficiaries who received food parcels. The parcels were distributed to 80 families of deaf students during the last week of Ramadan. The parcels included meat, chicken, macaroni, tomato sauce, cooking oil, olive oil, canned frozen vegetables etc.
25th Micro Finance Project completed for 2006 War victim in Lebanon – Larrisa Ghandour
2009-08-26
Project Achievements and Realized Progress. Being born a Muslim is one of the greatest blessings Allah can bestow upon a person, but many Muslims do not realize that. Larissa Ghandour and her son Dani have both not been born into an Islamic environment. Larissa is Russian. She married Dani’s father Arafat, who is Lebanese, in 1982 when he was studying in Russia to become a physical education teacher. However, Arafat later went back to Lebanon on his own, leaving Larissa and Dani behind in Russia. Arafat married a Lebanese lady and settled in the town of Nabatiyeh. Only in 2004, when Dani was already 21 years old, did his father send for him and Larissa in order to be near his son and provide for his college education. Dani enrolled in Beirut Arab University to study Communication Engineering. Unfortunately, he did not really come to know his father, who passed away shortly afterward. Dani and his mother Larissa had to fend for themselves again.
24th Micro Finance Project completed for 2006 War victim in Lebanon - Khadijah Faqih aged 62
2009-08-16
Project Achievements and Realized Progress. 62-year-old Khadijah Faqih is a mother of five. Two daughters and one son are married while 29-year-old Rola and 23-year-old Tawfeeq are still at home. Rola holds a BT (technical baccalaureate – two years) in special education. Due to her moderate scientific qualification, she was unable to find a decently-paying job and is presently working towards a TS (five-year university course) degree in the same field with LFT support to improve her employability. In order to fully concentrate on her studies, Rola quit her job as a teacher for special education. Tawfeeq is in the third year of a five-year course of Hotel Management.
Before 2006, Shirin Hamzah was a young graphic design student who lived with her mother, father and two brothers in the South Lebanese village of Kfar Tibnit. The July 2006 war was to change her life dramatically: The family’s house was hit by an Israeli bomb and reduced to rubble. When rescue workers arrived at the scene and pulled out the occupants, Shirin and her then 16-year-old brother had sustained only minor injuries but their father, mother and older brother were dead.
