Women’s Empowerment kicks off on Wednesday Sept. 22

Women’s Empowerment program will kick off on Wednesday 22 September. A new training program that LOST is conducting this fall. Eighty women in all LOST branches will attend special English classes and computer basics training. Each twenty women will be grouped in one class for two months. This program will help participants enroll in other business management courses that are continuously offered at LOST. 

Women’s Empowerment program this year would not have happened without the generous support of Mrs. Rabha Eidi who visited LOST last summer and met executives and senior staff there. Mrs. Eidi is a native of Lebanon, living in Toledo, OH since 1965. Since 2001 she contributed to many successful programs to help Lebanon. She became actively involved with two non-profit organizations to help Lebanon (Dar Al Hanan and Sadr Foundation). She currently is the International Director for Sadr Foundation U.S.A and Canada. In 2009, Mrs. Eidi received the “Expatriates Medal” from the General Directorate of the Lebanese Ministry Foreign Affairs.

A Life Changing Step

     “I’ve always believed that I have a role play in my life” said Sabah the determined mother and housewife. She continued talking about her decision she once made to change her life. So, she has thought a lot how to leap the first step in the long way which wasn’t paved for her. She was fought by her fellow-women “who were only used to gossiping, visiting each other without thinking how to take advantage of their time and to be productive members in society.”
   
    Sabah lived a dream that tickled her imagination day and night, and began blooming when she told her understanding husband and sons who agreed to support her. “I wanted to have steady steps and to have a unique role and make a difference in my life as a mother and as a citizen. I realized that I had  to learn English to help my sons to be successful in their studies especially  they were at crossing roads in their life. This is the way that led me to know LOST  and its staff who helped me to make my dream come true.” 

     “ At first, I took two English courses that gave me the chance to meet new people who I permanently compared myself to, and I secretly decided to be  good at computer as Suzan, one of my ambitious classmates, and to do a teaching course as Ola, another young fresh-graduate student who wanted to be a professional English teacher.” Yes, believe or not, Sabah has done both courses and she has been one of the brilliant students in her classes. She has never been absent only when she had lung surgery. You know what? A week after she left the hospital, she was in her class asking her teacher to make-up what she had missed.

     “LOST is the right place that I recommend to everyone I like. My husband and sons are proud of my achievement there, and they tell our visitors about my commitment and devotion of doing a very good job. Ah, I forgot to tell you, my son is doing an English course at LOST to improve his English because he wants to pass his high school official exam after he failed last year. The good thing is that I can help him at home  now since I took the same course.”