23 February 2010

BEIRUT: Although most people understand university education is a privilege, many students lose sight of the fact that being privileged also means responsibility. At the Lebanese International University (LIU), a group of students have made it their objective to raise awareness on their campus about society’s problems. On Saturday, the members of LIU’s “Talaba” club completed the last stage of a seven-day journey that took them to some of the poorest regions all across Lebanon.

“Talaba is a student club, devoted to secularism and individual freedom, regardless of political or religious biases,” Ali Jaafar, its president, explains. In the past, it has organized events highlighting the dangers of global warming, but this time, their project is more social in nature.

“The idea was born when I watched a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on TV,” Jaafar adds. “It said there are around a billion people in the world that suffer from hunger, that is, one person in every six. I felt we needed to draw attention to this issue.”

The students quickly realized that far from being an abstract problem, poverty was a very real issue for a great number of people in their own country. According to a 2008 report by the United Nations Development Program, 28 percent of Lebanon’s population can be considered as poor, and 8 percent as extremely poor. For the group from LIU, this was a challenge they felt needed facing.

“I thought: how can we make a small contribution to solve that problem? This is how we came up with the idea to do a documentary on poverty in Lebanon,” Jaafar says. “We wanted to show the real image of poverty, and let the affected tell their own story.”

In a rented coach they dubbed “Talabàs,” the students toured the regions of Lebanon, including the Bekaa, Nabatiyeh, Tyre, Sidon, Akkar, Tripoli and Beirut, trying to find the regions that were the most in need of help.

“First, we sent scouting teams into each of the regions,” explains Mohammad Murtada, a 26-year-old marketing student and media spokesman of the group. “They mapped the area and identified the poorest ones, and we then chose one or two of the poorest places in each region.”

In each of the places they visited, the students filmed the living conditions and interviewed the inhabitants, using equipment that had been supplied by their university, as well as through funding by the Lebanese NGO Al-Majmouaa. In addition to the filming, the students organized activities for the children of the neighborhood, to provide them with a distraction from their daily routine.

“In Akkar, for example, we came across a kid who had a goat as a pet, and that is all he ever played with,” Jaafar says. “We took the kids and played games with them, made them draw and gave each one a gift to take home. Some of these kids had never even seen a balloon.”

In the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood in Tripoli, one of the most neglected areas in Lebanon, the group took the kids out to participate in a wall-painting of a tree.

“When we had finished painting a tree on the wall, many people were watching and thanked us for taking an interest in their problems. In that neighborhood, there is a lot of fighting going on, but on that day, everyone was together,” Jaafar adds says.

The main purpose of the trip, however, is to draw people’s attention to the fact that poverty exists, sometimes next door.

In Beirut, for example, the group found something very much resembling a miniature shantytown, its inhabitants living their destitute lives completely out of touch with the bustling activity on Sodeco Square, a mere two-minute walk away.

“The things that I have seen are sometimes very terrible,” Jaafar says. “This is why we want to alert people’s attention to this problem.”

Talaba is hoping to screen the film in LIU in about two weeks. Following the premiere, the group will put up black boxes all over the campus, eventually spreading to LIU’s other branches in Lebanon, to collect used clothes and other items. “Everybody has something they don’t need anymore,” Jaafar explains. “We will collect these things and distribute to those families who need it most.”

After the initial event, the students hope that their charity project will be made sustainable by the voluntary participation of others. “We will give the other students the possibility to suggest people who they think might also need help,” Murtada says. “In this way, we can turn it into an ongoing process.”

Although their activities might seem modest compared to the scope of problems Lebanon’s poor are facing, Talaba’s members are cautiously optimistic that their contribution can have an impact.

“Of course, our resources are very limited,” Murtada admits. However, “we are hoping to alert those that can really make a difference, like NGOs and the government.”

Copyright The Daily Star 2010.