Philemon Project Preschool - February 2020 Update
Beirut, Lebanon
She is desperate, alone, and vulnerable. A single mother, a refugee, a migrant domestic worker – far away from her home and family, searching for a safe place to leave her child while she looks for work. She has fled her homeland, from the brutality of war, economic uncertainty, ecological disaster. Now, struggling to live in Lebanon as a refugee, she faces limited options. The GROW Center seeks to meet the needs of Syrian refugee migrant workers, and underserved Lebanese communities. We serve 75-80 children, providing early childhood development and adult mentoring for over 150 parents a month. While the present GROW Center is thriving, sadly, there are months we reach capacity and cannot accept new children. Recently when a single mother from Syria learned that we couldn’t receive her child, she burst into tears, falling to her knees, pleading, “please help me...I have no place to put her...”
Some weeks later, we were able to make room for her child, but they both suffered while waiting for a space at the Center. Our work is making a gospel missional impact on families. Many come from Muslim backgrounds, and many hear the gospel through our work. Because of this mother and her daughter, and many others like them, we are firmly committed to replicating our work to reach more families with the love of Christ.
Lebanon does not provide any social services for underserved and at-risk Syrian refugees, poor Lebanese, and migrant children. These communities face chaos and confusion as a way of life, and social scientists concur that chaos and trauma contribute to dysfunction, resentment, lack of hope, and even violence as they grow into adults. Our commitment is to provide at-risk groups with the best possible Christian early childhood development program, significantly narrowing ethnicity and income achievement gaps. We work with parents in our Adult Mentoring program, endeavoring to break cycles of dysfunction and teach new skills.
Some observable outcomes we see are improved parental empowerment and competency. Those improvements can result in changed attitudes, both in parenting skills and self-esteem and feelings about parenting in general. Those improvements also produce better social behaviors among children and parents (e.g., empathy, sharing, helping others) and a decrease in adverse reactions (e.g., aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity). These positive improvements lead to new ideas, such as more social connections between parents exchanging parenting advice, giving emotional support to one another, and sharing resources.
Our adult mentoring program contributes to the overall well-being of the whole family. When a parent takes part in the mentoring program, they have a better understanding of the advantages of building a healthy family and that family’s capacity to affect society with the good news. The value of building healthy members of a family is a step towards impacting our context and reflects the strong missiological values of the image of God and love for neighbor.
Grateful for your partnership,
Robert Hamd
Executive Director
Read more about Philemon Project Preschool HERE.
THE NEED
The Outreach Foundation is seeking gifts totaling $30,000 to assist with scholarships and general operations. You may make a gift HERE or by sending a check to our office.