FirstTree Community Center
$1,770.35
Raised
22
Donations
$10,000
Goal
Our Story:
When a diverse bunch of people cross paths and form meaningful connections, something good always comes out of it. It hasn’t been different with us.
Our team met in 2022 while working together in a small school in the heart of the surrounding refugee camps. We eventually joined together a year later, with the dream of creating something we could shape for the community. Lebanon hosts the largest number of NGOs in the world and the Bekaa Valley is no exception. Our small town of Deir Zenoun is located in central Bekaa, surrounded by beautiful mountains, and agricultural fields. The region is home to Muslim, Shiaa and Sunni, Christians, Catholics and Maronites and to the Armenian Orthodox of Anjar, just five kilometres away from us. The diversity does not stop with religion, there are also multiple nationalities and, since 2011, a large influx of refugees from Syria. This mix brings both beauty and uniqueness to the culture and region but also countless difficulties, and these difficulties do not end with foreign NGOs. Sometimes, just the opposite.
Our long term vision is to buy a plot of land that can then be given to the people of Lebanon and Dier Zanoun. Space has a wonderful vagueness about it and FirstTree, the community center we will build on that land, gives us a unique ability as an NGO. We will be able to tailor to the needs of the community using a space we have created, wherein our values of peace and integration will be actively invoked. In buying the land and allowing the community to decide its own needs, we will not only be able to provide employment and education to those who need it but also support residents in realizing their own initiatives. We will replant the trees that Deir Zanoun used to home, clean the river, and devise a system of recycling for the surrounding areas. The playpark we will build will be based on the values of inclusion and will be used to teach valuable social skills to children who live in the camps and those who live in the village. By funding this project through Wadi AlFikr, our Levantine Arabic Education Program, we will be able to create an economically sustainable NGO that does not rely on donor funding and where profits are directed back into local development.
Over a year of actively participating and engaging with the community, we have come together to co-create something from Deir Zenoun to Deir Zenoun. That’s when a group of people have come together to envision a more representative and needed future for the community.
Our first steps:
As part of our trajectory, we are in the process of co-creating solutions to make such a dream feasible. Our first step is to open an immersive and intensive Levantine Arabic Education Programme in Deir Zenoun that will officially accept students from April 2024.
Our programme will be dedicated to bridging the foreign world with the reality of Bekaa. A cultural immersion for our students who wish to learn Levantine Arabic in an authentic manner and with direct and daily contact with the complexities of daily life and the wonderful people and culture who make up the region.
Our classes will span across a month, integrating 4 days of Arabic classes, 1 day of workshops/activities regarding sustainability and nature and ways of life with an expansive collaboration with local people. Students are welcome to share their expertise, thoughts, and ideas in alignment with our community centre’s core pillars:
1- Peace
2- The belief we are all born equally
3- Female empowerment
4- Sustainability
5- Integration and Diversity
This will help international students to expand their concepts and thoughts on such a beautiful and intriguing reality, to dissolve pre-assumed ideas and importantly, to learn. The future will allow students to volunteer in the community center which will also provide an opportunity for them to share and be involved in a larger idea.
For this initial phase, we are looking to raise 10,000 USD by March 2024 so the school can be opened on April 2024.
How will this amount help us?
The 10,000 USD will be used to fund the first 6 months of the project in relation to:
- Rent, Electricity & Water for school facilities = $4,500
- Teachers’ Salaries = $4,400
- Basic Stationary = $100
- Workbook Materials = $560
- School Furniture = $100
- Accommodation Supplies = $200
- Transport = $135
- Digital Communications = $135
Total: $10,200
Any amount that we raise after this, we will use towards the development of our community center.
By contributing to our campaign, you’re enabling the creation of local solutions to local problems.
Thank you so much for helping us achieve this goal. Every small donation matters.
Together we can co-build a better world for all.
With love,
The FirstTree Team.
Donor Wall1
Ellie | £21.07