Crowdfunding the Syrian Refugee Crisis
It is a sticky, summer night in Beirut. A crowd gathers around a projector at a venue in the city’s Hamra district.
“10! 9! 8! 7! 6!” they count down.
The crowd is anticipating the launch of a crowdfunding effort called #ShatilAlive that’s designed to raise funds for the Basmeh wa Zeitooneh community organization and arts and cultural center located in the heart of Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp.
Shatila camp was established in 1950 as temporary shelter for Palestinians fleeing the creation of Israel; this is commonly referred to as the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe. Sixty-five years later, it is home not only to three generations of displaced Palestinians – who, despite many of them being born in Lebanon, do not share the same rights as Lebanese citizens – but also to thousands of Syrians fleeing the war next door.
Crammed into one square kilometer of urban space, some 40,000 refugees are now living on top of each other in Shatila camp, all but ignored by the Lebanese government. Trash piles up in the streets. Low-hanging electrical wires threaten to electrocute residents, while barely supplying the camp with any power. Without any space to expand outwards, recently arrived Syrian refugees have no choice but to join already occupied homes, or build upwards, the physical strain on faulty infrastructure compounding the emotional strain of exile.
The crowd gathered for the launch of the fundraiser is mostly young Syrians, many of them artists and humanitarian types who either work or volunteer their time at the center to help fellow Syrians living in Lebanon while they wait out the war.
“5! 4! 3! 2! 1!” #ShatilAlive is online.
Basmeh wa Zeitooneh started as a volunteer-run collective, handing out food and clothing to newly arrived Syrian refugee families in need, but over the past three years it has bourgeoned into a full-fledged organization, offering everything from art workshops and theater classes for students to day care and medical assistance for refugee families.
The organization infuses Shatila camp with artistic energy. Though it may not always have basic necessities – power, running water – it is a hub of cultural activity. Women from the camp use the center to make traditional Palestinian embroidery, which some have leveraged into their own small businesses.
Their children attend the organization’s school, and participate in after-school programming that encourages them to express themselves through art and performance. The school is an informal one, designed for the many Syrian students who are unable to attend Lebanese public schools. About half of the almost 1.2 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon are children, and only 25 percent of them are enrolled in Lebanese public schools. Most of them rely on informal schooling, like the education program that Basmeh wa Zeitooneh offers, to not fall behind completely.
“The kids’ program is one of the most important parts of the organization,” Osama, a 30-year-old English teacher at the school from Syria, tells Rolling Stone. (He asked that his last name not be printed since his family is still in Syria.) “At the beginning of the school year, they were drawing bomb scenes and soldiers,” he says of his students, all of them Syrian refugees. “But now they’re drawing hearts and angels. They’re drawing their hopes and their dreams.”
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