Message from the President

Invitation to make a dream come true

Ayadina is about helping people who are most needy and least visible. It is about old men and women suffering the pains of loneliness and destitution, struggling against sickness with no resource to medical care. It is about broken homes, broken hearts and broken lives. It is about youth caught in the web of a cruel past, an empty present and a menacing future.

Ayadina is about partnership between those who try to help and those who need to be helped, bound together by a common humanity where privileged cannot escape responsibility and responsibility can only be upheld by those who care and dare look social dilapidation in the eye and work for solutions. This vicious circle in which a whole community finds itself trapped, leads to the worst kind of human condition: despair.

These people, old and young, feel that they have no control over their lives. Any attempt to change this imposed status quo of desolation should start with the conviction that intervention is needed and with the determination to reverse this reality.

Ayadina is a healing touch for the sick of body and spirit, a ray of hope for those chained in the “heart of darkness”, an air of dignity for the downtrodden that have long lost any sense of human worth.

Most of all, Ayadina is you joining with us to push the frontier and bring about a better life to fellow citizens, old and young, who have only seen the cruel side of life.

Come along so that together we may make a difference in the life of one, in the life of few, in the life of many.

Vision

“The child of today is the man of tomorrow.” The elderly of today are the children of yesterday.”

The aim of community support is to provide dignity for the old and opportunity for the young. We chose to enhance both and cater to their needs; the old, with their shattered and fragmented lives behind them; children with a whole life of opportunities and potentials, but out of their reach.

Mission: In search of lost dignity

Working to improve the quality of life for the underprivileged, old and young, within a scope covering healthcare, self-worth (Companionship and assistance at our center or through home visitation), and talent cultivation for children.

Key objectives

1. Helping destitute old and young attain minimum standards in terms of quality of life, covering health living conditions and psychological wellness. The purpose would be to help them restore their long lost dignity, improve their self-image and introduce to their lives a ray of hope to dispel despair and bring joy to their empty lives.
2. Providing a home for the homeless elderly, catering to their multiple needs ranging from food, hygiene and healthcare to social connectedness and companionship. For those involved, this will be the only means to end their days in dignity protected from the forsakenness of homelessness.
3. Transforming the lives of destitute children through multi-faceted programs focusing on talent cultivation. Needless to say this constituency has no access to such programs be it at home or at school. Provision of this form of support (artistic and cultural exposure) also serves to combat social delinquency, enhance motivation and reinforce their drive for success and fulfillment.
4. Working on neighborhood rehabilitation (streets and houses) with a view to making them better habitats conducive to healthy family life in pleasant surroundings. The purpose is to try to reverse urban blight with all its psycho-sociological ramifications negatively impacting individuals and communities. Since uprooted ness is at the heart of the social malaise such communities suffer from, beautiful surroundings (inside their houses as well as their streets) will contribute to their sense of belonging and pride.The home and neighborhood development project: “HABITAT FOR DIGNITY” is to “take beauty where beauty doesn’t go.” It is a challenge to transform, to change, to turn ugliness into beauty; despair into hope.

   Dilapidated homes and urban decay constitute a fertile soil for apathy, resignation, delinquency, crime, drug addiction, a sense of worthlessness, loss of self worth and self esteem, family violence, and a hostile view of self, others and the world.

   The key objective here is to demonstrate the link between improving homes and neighborhood on the one hand and engendering hope and constructive behavior on the other. This step should not be viewed in isolation but in the broader context of our overall assistance portfolio covering home visitations, counseling, food assistance, medical referral, social outlet provision, artistic and cultural education for children and close one to one work in the extreme cases involving unusual levels of hardship.

Core values

1. Ayadina’s work is not about charity. We believe in an all-encompassing enterprise for human solidarity where those helped have rights, which translate into duties for the ones who help. There are no givers. There are no takers. Only partners.
2. Our pursuit of lost dignity for the old and missed opportunities for the young represents two faces of the same truth. The child of today is the man of tomorrow. The elderly of today are the children of yesterday.
3. Helplessness is a debilitating social ill that ravishes the hearts and souls of the destitute; hence, our emphasis on regaining dignity and self esteem just as much as offering our recipients food, shelter and healthcare.

Guiding principles

1. Dilapidation is one inseparable whole made up of many faces and facets. So should be he programs designed to alleviate it. Poverty, ill health, hopelessness, delinquency, violence and despair go hand in hand and feed on one another. Our response should be integrated to be able to address each of them in the overall context of the total picture.
2. Effective giving involves one’s self and one’s time first. Only then would material assistance produce the desired effect, continuity and follow up. Personal attention, sharing lives, showing genuine empathy makes all the difference. More important than feeling with the other is to feel the other.
3. One life restored for a senior citizen, one lost opportunity regained for a youngster, is its own reward. Those we are trying to help give us a sense of self worth just as much as we give them.

Program profile

Senior Citizens’ Program. Beneficiaries: Around 125 men and women above 65.

Programs at the Center:

• Three times a week they come to chat, exchange ideas, play cards, chess, sing, dance, stitch, cook, eat, drink, watch television. The most successful and popular program is improvised theatre and birthday celebrations.
• Home visitation.
• Outings: trips to restaurants, historic sites outside the city, theatre, mountain resorts, etc…
• Healthcare: medical assistance, medical follow up, hospital admission, operations, medications.

Children’s program. We offer the following artistic classes to children ranging from the age of 6 to 13: So far, we have around 50 children enrolled. This year we expect this number to rise.

• Music
• Drawing classes
• Drama classes
• Dance classes

All these classes are run by professional artists and teachers who are paid either by session or monthly basis.

Initiatives in progress

We aim at renting or buying a place to host all the children’s program to separate the age groups we serve. The future plan is to establish a “Center for culture and art” in an impoverished area.

A call for support

If you think that our goals are worthy please remember that we can pursue them only with your support.
Please visit our blog often to keep track of developments. Visit our center in Sin El-Fil/Nabaa to see who we are and what we do.
Share with us your ideas and whatever resources you can devote to support our work.

Remember: Serving the underprivileged is a privilege. Beauty is a must. Dignity is a right. Every desert hides a fountain. In every dark sky, there is a star shining for you. We are all trapped in a conspiracy of love.

One day a little girl asked her mom if Santa was real. The mom’s answer was “yes, he is, only for those who believe in him.”

Maya Najjar
Founding president
Ayadina