Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Academy of Active Citizens

 The Academy of Youth is preparing youth to be more engaged in civic affairs. After a series of interactive workshops on citizenship, civic participation and conflict resolution for around three months, youth became more aware of their role and duties in society. They became more involved in community affairs. In fact, they decided to respond to the call of the Ministry of Culture to clean the inside of the ruins of Ballbeck. On Saturday the 23rd of July more than 160 youth participated in the cleaning campaign for more than four hours of hard work. The campaign by itself was a practical call to draw the attention of local authorities to do its work more than an event to clean the temples of Baalbeck. This is the right based approach that youth have learned in the Academy.
The engagement of youth in community issues was reflected  by drawing murals with different messages visualizing their calls  to draw attention to issues  they found relevant in their communities. In Hermel, youth preferred to send a clear message for people to take care of their environment, in Baalbeck, youth decided to draw different road signs signaling a special care to road safety since they believed that many citizens of their ages are victims of car accidents and damages.


Sunday, August 7, 2011

Meaningful movies at LOST

The Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training organizes weekly meaningful movies for children in Arabic and English languages in its 4 branches.
This activity organized by LOST is targeting groups of less fortunate children in Baalbeck- Hermel.More than 30 kids are attending these movies every week. Such activities give kids the opportunity to learn English through enjoyable modes. These kids miss every entertaining activity in a region which lacks recreational facilities. The movies bring them more than happiness.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Conflict Resolution for teachers in Baalbeck

LOST is organizing a conflict resolution training course in Baalbeck. This new course aims at training teachers on how they can resolve the various types of conflicts that usually occur between students and teachers or between students’ parents and the teaching staff in any school.
In the first course offered this spring more than 20 teachers from different schools in Baalbeck- Hermel participated. Such course included training on the following topics: the roots of conflict, the different skills of conflict resolution such as dialogue, negotiation, mediation and adjudication.
“It was a chance provided by LOST to help us solving the problems that we face in teaching.” Was a statement repeated by all trainees.