Red Cross Youth in Balamand

My work has been focused in the northern part of Lebanon, especially in Balamand, which lays around 10 km south east of Tripoli. Balamand center is a Red Cross Youth club which is centred in the University of Balamand .The center has around 20 volunteers, and they do activities within and outside the university campus. So here I will spend a lot of my time, where I go north at least once a week, and spend the night if necessary.

I had my first meeting with the volunteers on Thursday where we planned the coming UNICEF activity which they were going to have the next day for children in the age of 8-9 years old in a school close by. It was preparations to far out in the night, where we wanted to make all the material ready for the activity the following day, it was an excited team who wanted to do a tremendous work for the Red Cross. I spend the night in the home of the president of the youth club, his sister lives in Denmark and there was a lot of chat about Scandinavia, I was invited for Danish honey on white bread and to see pictures from our neighbour country.

We got up in the sunrise the next day to meet the volunteers and to go jointly to Koura, where the activity was going to be executed. I had slept half an hour, because I had gotten an eye infection that kept me up all night, I took myself together and made myself ready to meet the 65 kids that waited for us, and who were going to go through a tight program of activities. They actively participated for knowledge about nutrition and hygiene. There were six stands, and I got the responsibility to lead 10 wonderful kids through all these. Luckily they spoke English and they were extremely obedient where they walked on a strict line. I had a great time with them, and off course I got some time to play a little bit with them.