Volunteers
reach out to displaced with 'hygiene kits'
Walk into Van Dyck these days and you are met with the sounds and
smells of a beehive of volunteers.
The crisp scent of cleaning detergents and new cardboard boxes mixes
with the rhythmical raps of staplers used to label each box, which
will contain two 'hygiene kits' that will go out to people who were
forced to leave their homes in a rush, leaving all their belongings
behind, when the Israeli war on Lebanon started on July 12.
Corridors and classrooms fill up with bustling volunteers and stocks
of cleansing material. Tiny eight year-olds line up next to seasoned
fifty-year-olds to join others in a human chain of activity.
Barely one-meter tall, Karima Mroue, 8, is entrusted with the task
of dropping a box of tissues in the plastic bag that will constitute
an individual "hygiene kit" of soaps, shampoos, toothpaste
and other personal hygiene items.
Karima says that she came alone, but found a number of her friends
already there.
Volunteers of different sizes and ages work side-by-side to prepare
6,000 individual 'hygiene' kits that will be sent out to people in
the South, under a UNFPA-funded project.
"This is a small effort, but will still make a lot of impact,"
says Kareem Osman, from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),
which is funding one of AUB's relief efforts. The Swiss government
and other individual donors have been financing the kits which the
AUB Public Health team has been distributing to displaced families
in some 15 schools around Beirut.
The volunteers are made up of children of faculty members or AUB staff,
AUB students and faculty members and their friends.
On any given day, one is likely to bump into Professors Pat McGreevy
and Cyrus Schayegh who are "regulars" here, according to
Mona Khalidi, one of the members of the AUB Volunteer Relief team,
which was set up in the second week of the war, in response to a rising
humanitarian need. The team regularly visits 15 schools in Beirut,
where centers for the displaced have been set up.
The AUB team, which consists of both a public health and a medical
arm, seeks to provide displaced families with basic health and hygiene
needs.
"We are acting as facilitators, not charity-givers," says
Khalidi. "We are doing our best in our project to make partners
out of the displaced families, so they can help this effort succeed.
Indeed, the Public Health team has been conducting intensive training
sessions to some displaced individuals as well as volunteer leaders
who act as coordinators in the various centers. The trained individuals
would, then, act as the eyes and ears of the Public Health team, telling
them of any health or hygiene issue that might arise, so that the
AUB Volunteer team could address it before it would go out of control.
"Hygiene is the basis to preventing the spread of disease,"
says Khalidi. "That's why it's really important to get these
hygiene kits out to the displaced."
Of course, the kits are not the only thing the team follows up on.
"Water is a major problem, and we try to think creatively and
find solutions to every problem," Khalidi adds.
"Lack of hygiene combined with reduced immunity due to stress
could lead to health problems," explains Iman Nuwayhid, who is
leading the public health arm of the AUB volunteer team.
Diala Zein, 15, came with her friends, to help out. "It feels
good to do something useful," she says. "It's both fun and
for a good cause," chimes in her friend, Aya Hamadeh, 15.
Even though a UN-brokered ceasefire came to force on August 14, thus
allowing many displaced families to return to their homes, the volunteer
team has decided to keep on visiting the centers, even though they
acknowledge happily that the numbers of the displaced have significantly
grown smaller.
"We have decided to keep on visiting the displaced centers for
another week or so, " says Nuwayhid. "We don't want anyone
to fall through the cracks."
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