Announcing Anera’s Back-To-School Campaign

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As children are preparing to return to start a new school year, Anera is raising funds to support multifaceted projects that help disadvantaged students in Palestine and Lebanon.

As students in Palestine and Lebanon return to school, Anera supporters like you can help ensure that they have an opportunity to receive a quality education.

We are happy to announce our Back-To-School Campaign, taking place from August 15 to August 25, 2022. The campaign will raise funds to foster students’ continued education by equipping families with the tools they need to best prepare students for school each day.

Across the region, poverty, economic pressures to enter into early marriage, and food insecurity can significantly impede a student’s academic performance or even cut their education short. In fact, only one-third of all Palestinian four- and five-year-olds in the West Bank and Gaza are enrolled in preschool.

Attention to early childhood development is especially important for children living in violent and unpredictable environments. Anera works to support children through multifaceted programming that provides daily meals to students, delivers training programs to adults and post-secondary students, rehabilitates old preschools and even constructs brand new ones in areas without facilities so that families can build a hopeful future. 

Anera’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs help students get the best learning experience.

Our education programs focus on learning, but also incorporate food equity, employment, and small family farms. Our Back-To-School Campaign engages with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4: Education, but also addresses a number of other SDGs.

Take our Farms to Fosool (F2F) project in Gaza, which supports education, health, and agriculture. F2F hires 100 local farmers to provide fresh produce, which is delivered to 40 local women who are employed to prepare and package fresh breakfast meals every day. These nutritional meals are delivered to 12 preschools across Gaza, reaching 1,428 children every morning. By keeping children in the habit of eating nutritiously, they will be able to better concentrate and excel in school, increasing their chances to receive a quality education.

Tala, 14-year-old Palestinian in the ninth grade, is participating in Anera’s SAMA program so she can stay in school.

Another example is our Sama (Safeguarding Adolescents through Meaningful Assistance) project, which addresses one of the most pervasive hurdles to gender equality today: child marriage, which is most often forced upon the estimated 650 million child brides worldwide. In Lebanon, some 40% of Syrian refugee women aged 20-24 are married before the age of 18. By keeping young girls out of circumstances involving early or forced marriage, they can continue their education and increase their independence.

But supporting students in any capacity would achieve little if their parents and families are not supported too. That is why Anera’s Women Can program targets women-headed families, empowering mothers in Palestine to be accomplished providers for their children. Tahani, the sole breadwinner for her family of five children, applied to this program to learn more about beekeeping, and to raise money for her family. “I’ve sold almost 80% of my honey products. It’s an exciting accomplishment for me,” says Tahani, feeling more confident in her ability to keep her children well fed and in school.

Tahani, a beekeeper and participant in Anera’s Women Can program in Palestine.

It is because of the support from projects like these that children are able to stay in school. Despite their success so far, the challenges facing students and families in Lebanon and Palestine persist. Fortunately, Anera’s community of supporters remain devoted to addressing the pressing needs in these communities. We cannot achieve our goals without your support to help these students get the quality education they deserve.

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