A Week of Love

With Valentine’s Day in the air, in the month of February, we reflected on what love means to our communities and our work. To help spread more love, our Week of Love Campaign highlighted the tote bags made by the women in our Empowerment Programme and customized by the youth at our centres. Everyday we heard from different people about how love remains central to their lives despite the difficulties of their circumstance.

We’ve heard from Fatima, who is a kindergarten student at our Bukra Ahla centre in Beirut. Answering about what she loved, she said she absolutely loves many things, but mostly learning in class every day! Later in the week, a young man from the Croix-Rouge de Belgique and Fedasil centres in Brussels shared what he loves about SB’s educational activities: he loved learning how to braid bracelets, because he has no idea how to do it before and now he can make them whenever he wants!

On the theme of ‘community’, from our SB Espoir volunteer team in Brussels, Roberta said she loved “sharing all together life obstacles by smiling”. Returning to Lebanon, two Grade 3 best friends from our Saida centre presented what they loved about each other and about their friendship. The following day, girls from our Beirut centre wrote letters expressing their love towards themselves, embracing their own uniqueness. Later, the SB Espoir team from Brussels told us the story of a young refugee from Guinea who said the clay activities reminded him of his love for the future and his hope to become a mason. Our students in our Arsal centre also got creative! They made craft on the topic of self-love. On Valentine’s Day, a group of Year 6 girls from Saida shared with everyone their advice on how they love and accept themselves and each other.

Our Lebanon volunteer teams also shared what they loved about this country. All of them said their friends at SB and the communities they work with made Lebanon feel like home from the moment they arrived.

All together, our Week of Love has given us unique insights on friendship, education, community and self-esteem.