Tag Archives | ngo

Eb7ar – Helping Underprivileged Children Stay Warm This Season

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a relatively young NGO called “Eb7ar” (or Sailing in Arabic) that serves to help needy communities.

They are currently organizing their first campaign (A journey to warmth) which aims to provide children aged between 3 and 12 years with basic clothing to keep them warm during winter time, and for that they have came to an agreement with a local supplier to provide them with a package comprising a scarf, a hat, gloves, socks and a cover, at a cost of 15,000L.L per package.

However, they unfortunately can’t do it all by themselves, and to help them reach the maximum number of kids, Eb7ar is calling for donations as little as 15,000L.L in order for them to reach their intended target to keep as much children as they can warm this season.

You can get in contact with them through Facebook and Instagram if you wish to take part in their campaign.

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Five Things The Good Note Initiative is Missing

goodnote

If you haven’t heard about it yet, The Good Note is a new initiative by Bou Khalil Supermarket aiming to give the children on the streets the essentials they need without funding the adults who sent them out to the streets and might be abusing them.

The idea is to sell small vouchers worth 1,000L.L each that can only be redeemed at Bou Khalil for necessities and small treats or at Pharmalife pharmacy in Hazmieh. You’re of course supposed to keep these vouchers in your wallet to give them to the child you may encounter on the street so that they can buy the stuff they really need, and this way you make sure you’re actually giving them responsibly.

The initiative is definitely good and plausible, I personally usually avoid giving child beggars any money because I know it will end up in the wrong hands, and always prefer to give them any food I might have instead. However, after giving a second thought about The Good Note it sounded a bit unpractical for the following reasons.

  1. Explaining the idea to children

    I know we get stuck in traffic for a good time in Beirut, but sometimes you have so little time to give children the voucher and explain to them it isn’t fake and that they can really redeem it at a certain supermarket. Judging by how these children behave, I doubt they will believe it and will most probably end up throwing away the vouchers.

  2. Branch locations

    Assuming a child was convinced to go redeem a voucher, Bou Khalil has only one branch in Beirut (Koraytem) and going all the way from Achrafieh, Bechara El Khoury, or Mazraa for example doesn’t really seem cost effective to me in order to redeem a vouhcer, two or three.
    Other branches nearby Beirut are located in Hazmieh, Hadath, and Mansourieh.

  3. How much are you willing to give?

    Seriously now, how much are willing to give a child beggar? I personally never gave them more than 1,000L.L. So these children will have to wait until they collect a good number of these vouchers before making a trip to the supermarket to buy the necessities they need.

  4. What happens to the change?

    Say a child bought goods worth 2,250L.L, what happens to the remaining 750L.L? The website claims the voucher cannot be redeemed for real money.

  5. The  generated profit

    The website claims the generated profit from the sales of these good notes will go to an NGO that works to care for street and working children in Lebanon. It isn’t clear though whether the exact voucher value or the profit generated after completing a sales transaction will be donated to the NGO, but I think it is most probably the latter, which seems very little money to me…
    It also wasn’t clear what would happen to the value of the vouchers that get thrown away and end up never used, which will result in pure profit for Bou Khalil alone.

I really don’t want Bou Khalil to hate on me because of this post, but it is our right to question such initiatives. In my opinion, Bou Khalil could have simply offered people to purchase any goods they want and deposit them in a box at the exit and street children will then be free to enter into the supermarket and pick the items they need the most (it can be limited to 2 items per day).

COOP Supermarkets also started a good initiative a while ago allowing customers to pay an extra 1,500L.L for a pack of bread to be available at the entrance for anyone who might be in need.

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Sar Lezem Rassak Yefroz – This Makes No Sense

sarlezem

There’s this “Sar Lezem Rassa Yifroz” campaign on Facebook that caught my attention, not because of the catchy name but because I found it a bit weird.

The people behind that campaign believe that the closure of Naameh landfill will result in a crisis similar to what happened last year when waste piled up in Beirut, and want to manage that crisis by asking people to start sorting their waste material starting January 17th when Sukleen might stop collecting garbage due to the closure of the landfill.

The sorting is quite simple, in black bags you’re supposed to put food scraps along with paper to reduce the moisture and therefore delay the food fermentation, and in blue bags you put everything else (plastic, glass, metal, etc…).

Now what will happen as of January is that there will be around 100 trucks which will roam the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon to collect the blue bags ONLY (the ones containing recyclable material and can be sold) and leave the black ones on the street. So basically what irritates people the most and makes this crisis a crisis, that is the bad smell of fermented food scraps, will remain there! So I don’t really see how will this campaign manage the crisis other than by reducing the piles a bit and making use of the recyclable stuff (for their own benefits?).

Furthermore, they seem pretty confident that the campaign will reach a large number of people as they prepared a hundred trucks to roam the streets, but their facebook page seemed to have have no more than 480 likes at the time of publishing this post, so they will most probably be surprised when they notice the blue bags they targeted were full of all kind of waste and not just recyclable materials (don’t say I didn’t warn you guys!).

Not to mention that one of the campaign managers is also accused of copying the slogan from an Arabnet competition last year

The whole thing really doesn’t make a lot of sense now eh..?

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Donner Sang Compter’s Mobile Blood Bank

Check this new explainer video by Wezank introducing Donner Sang Compter’s new mobile blood bank that aims to eliminate the “replacement donation” system in Lebanon, and save a lot of time and effort for all those who will be in need of blood in the future.

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Help books find a home

If you have got some books to give away but don’t know whom to give it to, then you might be interested in the campaign Antoine Online is launching to donate books to NGOs, public libraries, and organizations.

There are already boxes available at all Antoine branches to leave your used books into on conditions that they are in a good condition, more or less recent, and neither scholar books nor magazines will be accepted.

In case you have no books to give, you can still donate gift vouchers to an organization of your choice by visiting the campaign’s page here.

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BETA at risk of losing their location

I’m surprised this news didn’t make it to any of the local websites/newspapers. I actually just read on CNN that BETA (Beirut for the Ethical Treatments of Animals) is now at risk of losing their location because their neighbors no longer want animals to surround them.

“We have villas behind us and they are suing us. They want us out,” said Hesayne. “Now we have to find a land. The problem is nobody wants to have dogs around them.”

Hesayne and her colleague Sevine Zahran have lobbied the Lebanese government to increase its animal-protection laws. Lebanon is one of a few countries not signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), making it an easy transit point for wildlife smugglers, and it has few domestic animal-protection laws. Source

With all the problems the country is currently going through, protecting animals is one of the least of people’s concern I guess.

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