Nov, 2015
Ein El Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp is the largest and most crowded camp in Lebanon.
Situated just southeast of the city of Saida, Ein El Hilweh has the highest concentration of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon and from Syria within its borders. The Palestinian camp’s population is about 80,000. The last several decades in Ein El Hilweh have been marked by inter-factional violence. Clashes in August 2023 led to damaged homes, infrastructure, and displacement of hundreds of people including children, persons with disabilities, and elderly people.
Camp residents face many difficulties, including crowded living conditions, unemployment, violence and disrupted education among its youth population.
Anera has been working to create better living conditions in Ein El Hilweh for over a decade by supporting the rehabilitation of infrastructure and addressing healthcare and education issues. Periodic violence does not stand in the way of Anera continuing to maintain long-term projects in the camp while also responding rapidly to needs created by crises.
Education and Youth Development for Refugees
In response to low school enrollment rates and a high dropout rate among youth, Anera has implemented a comprehensive youth development program in refugee camps throughout Lebanon. These projects aim to provide youth with transferable skills they need to re-enter the formal education system, obtain jobs in the workforce, or develop on a personal level.
In partnership with UNICEF, Anera has planned and executed remedial education courses and vocational training workshops designed to appeal to refugees who are interested in pursuing an education but are unable to attend school for various reasons. Many of them cannot afford tuition fees or must work to support their families. Others have disabilities that public schools can’t accommodate or have been out of school for many years due to the Syrian crisis and have fallen behind in their studies.
Programs like these allow students that have fallen through the cracks to step back into an educational community. Partnering with six local organizations in Ein El Hilweh, the project provides the following services to youth:
- Basic education: Courses in literacy (English & Arabic), mathematics, and computers.
- Life skills: Short classes in civic engagement, conflict management, hygiene and health promotion, and leadership and employability training.
- Vocational skills: Workshops in photography, soap-making, job interview skills, basic first aid, cooking, customer service, office equipment use and more.
- Sports for development: activities, thematic tournaments and events, physical rehabilitation of sports fields and facilities, and hygiene kits.
The program has supported thousands of youth in Ein El Hilweh through the non-formal education and skills-based training courses. Holistic in nature and diverse in content, the program has achieved excellent student retention rates. The project is also proving successful at engaging Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese youth living in the camp, which is a significant feat due to the turmoil among various sects.
In 2021, young people from Anera’s plumbing and construction vocational education program improved their community’s water situation by installing a new public water fountain in Ein El Hilweh. As part of their experiential learning, they chose this project because they saw a real need for it in the camp. The students received a cash-for-work stipend and put their skills to work helping their community.
Better Buildings for Childhood Learning
Anera is committed to accessible, quality education in refugee camps, which includes building safe learning environments. In the mid-2010s, Anera renovated a UNRWA preschool in the camp, providing a healthy environment for children to access quality education and inspiring them to learn. The center provides a safe and intellectually stimulating space for preschoolers to find normalcy in their lives, which are too often disrupted by violence and instability.
The rehabilitation included enhanced security features, freshly painted classrooms, child-size fixtures, an updated playground, and sealed roofs and windows. And the renovations went beyond construction: we equipped the school with high-quality children’s books, toys, and furniture, ensuring a interactive and innovative learning environment.
Supplying Students
In 2020, Anera and the Women Programs Center partnered to distribute thousands of school kits in Ein El Hilweh. Spiraling inflation rates in Lebanon meant many families were anxious about being able to afford the dramatically increased prices for even the most basic goods, including school supplies. The students who received school kits through this distribution did not have to worry about being able to buy school materials that year.
Emergency Relief in Ein El Hilweh
Emergency response and humanitarian relief are paramount to Anera operations in Ein El Hilweh because many families cannot meet their most basic needs and conditions in the camp are often unstable. With the surge of refugees from Syria in the mid-2020s, conditions in the camp deteriorated and opportunities to improve livelihoods became limited.
The escalated violence in August 2023 exacerbated these difficulties, as more than 2,000 Ein El Hilweh residents were displaced from their homes, living in shelters managed by UNRWA. Anera responded to this escalation with emergency medicines, hygiene kits for families, ready-to-eat meals, and portable solar-powered lights to provide immediate relief for those most affected.
Since 2013, Anera has been working to help refugee families prepare for the winter, selecting Palestinian refugee families from Syria who were most in need and host families who had generously shared their homes with new refugees. These families received kits containing winter blankets, quilts, heaters, rechargeable emergency flashlights, hygiene items and warm clothes.
Another aspect of the winterization program involved teaching families about various winter-related illnesses and emergency health issues common to the camp. Anera worked with the Najdeh Association, a local partner, to train health workers to provide in-depth public health education, making the program more sustainable and impactful for years to come.
Anera continues to provide winterization support to Ein El Hilweh each year by delivering winter blankets, emergency lights and other necessities with the help of many community-based organizations and in-kind donations from our partners.
Health Education and Medical Aid in Ein El Hilweh
To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, Anera hired young people to go door-to-door in their communities to register people for vaccination. We also facilitated transportation to vaccination sites. These efforts greatly increased vaccination rates in Palestinian refugee camps like Ein El Hilweh.
Anera’s holistic programming in the Ein El Hilweh camp integrates health education into both non-formal education courses and life skill classes. To implement the health awareness element, Anera trains health tutors who know how to appropriate and effectively discuss personal hygiene, home hygiene, nutrition and other sensitive topics.
The interactive teaching methodology and hands-on class sessions provide safe spaces for students to contribute to discussions, bringing the topics to life. Students are also equipped with hygiene kits to further reinforce positive personal hygiene practices that lead to better overall health. We also hold awareness sessions for the parents of younger children to ensure the community fully understands the importance of child health education. Many parents have said that the hygiene kits and proper training have enabled their families to build healthier habits, even in the tough conditions in which they’re forced to live.
Providing medicines and medical supplies to camps and clinics in Ein El Hilweh is vital to ensuring the health and safety of refugees. For instance, Anera equips Human Call Hospital — the only 24/7 emergency clinic in the camp — with about 30% of its medical supplies. Since the hospital treats 50-60 patients per day, the support of Anera’s donor community positively affects thousands of patients.
Training Ein El Hilweh Youth in Sports and Life Skills
In Ein El Hilweh, sports programs give youth the opportunity to cultivate a passion and temporarily escape their difficult living conditions. They also offer an opportunity to teach teenagers key life skills, such as conflict mitigation and healthy lifestyle habits.
The innovative program has the capacity to reach thousands of children because Anera trains coaches and community leaders to carry out the program. They develop relationships with players on and off the field, implementing disciplinary techniques, promoting hygiene and teaching the players to diplomatically resolve problems.
Anera has trained coaches and provided sports clubs with equipment and uniforms for boys and girls. We've also hosted games, open sports days, and practices, ensuring that girls are able to fully participate.
Anera also renovated a sports field in Ein El Hilweh, so the youth have a safe, inviting place to learn and play. The community has ownership of their space through a playfield committee of elected officials charged with creating rules and regulations regarding usage, maintenance and sustainability.