Lebanon: a group of Focolare youth are finding ways to support the Lebnenele (= “my Lebanon”) initiative, which emerged from the October 2019 protests. Through this initiatve, young students have set themselves to help families most in need. The Youth for a United World of the Focolare Movement in Lebanon have made a commitment to support families most in need in their country, in collaboration with the student-led Lebnenele (“my Lebanon”) initiative which grew from the popular protests of October 2019. At that time, thousands of citizens, including a high proportion of youth, took to the streets to protest against the government imposition of new taxes on goods and services such as fuel, tobacco and online telephone calls. The protests led to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri on 29 October 2019. During one of these protests, a group of youth – later to give rise to Lebnenele – noticed an obviously poor person handing out handkerchiefs to whoever needed them. This inspired them into action. Joelle Hajjar is one of those young people who were part of the Lebnenele project from the start. “In that moment,” she recalls, “we started to open our eyes to see the needs of families around us. We decided to start helping them with donations we could receive from friends or through social media”. After the terrible explosion in Beirut on 4 August 2020, which caused such damage to the surrounding population, this group of young people decided to extend the Lebnenele initiative to express true affection and care towards their own nation in difficulty. They set themselves a goal of collecting enough donations to provide food parcels for 50 families at Christmas. Thanks to the solidarity built up around them, they were able to go beyond that target and help 76 families. This convinced them the initiative must not end but should keep on growing so it can help more and more families. And so it proved to be. Fund-raising activity to provide essential goods to families in need is continuing to this day. George and Salim, two members of the Youth for a United World group in Lebanon, explain, “We decided to help Lebnenele by setting up a market for second-hand goods: bags, clothes, scarves, costume jewellery, and so on, all in good condition. By selling these things, we’re raising good money to buy essential items that we give to Lebnenele. In this way we know the items reach many Lebanese families who really need them”. Joelle concluded, “The Focolare youth are supporting us in many ways, raising money in their market activity and helping to prepare the goods to give out. With them, we share a desire to communicate the Ideal of unity to these families, to create a solidarity and unity among us which can last”.

Laura Salerno

https://youtu.be/zXS2fl4ytYU