The “Food for Assets” project implemented by the Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training (LOST) in partnership with the World Food Program (WFP) was launched earlier in July, 2019 and aims at rehabilitating and constructing 4,371 meters of irrigation canals, 650 meters of rainwater drainage canals, and rehabilitating 1,344 meters of agricultural roads.
The project’s greater aim is to improve the lives of the participants in the project and increase their food security while improving the agricultural reality in Baalbeck-Hermel. This will lead to improved crop quality, decreased costs, and decreased unemployment rates, in addition to increasing social cohesion between participants, which is reflected on the community.
Participating in the project and becoming co-workers, Lebanese and Syrian refugees showed increased willingness to interact, communicate, and socialize with one another. Lebanese and Syrian women and men worked in groups for months, they revealed improved team spirit, better communication, and more productivity and efficiency. This was expressed in the camaraderie between the participants. This will lead to better understanding of one another and acceptance of one another, which will ultimately lead to increased social cohesion in Baalbeck.
Apart from social cohesion, the participants in the project are performing construction activities under the supervision of an engineer and a foreman (skilled worker). These activities provide the participants with lots of diversified experiences in the domain of construction that will ultimately lead to employment. They are learning on a daily basis and increasing their experiences exponentially; this experience is then employed in getting jobs and thus improving their livelihoods.
The benefits of the project are not only on the participants, it is also on the agricultural and non-agricultural communities. The agricultural community will start to benefit from the project after the works are completed and the infrastructure is ready for water to pass through it, like it was the case in previous projects. On the other hand, the non-agricultural community is benefiting as a result of the implementation of the works. For example, in conjunction with the rehabilitation of irrigation canals in the Basateen area, the team in the project expanded the width of a local road from 1.5 meters to 2 meters, which facilitated the movement of cars in the region, and defused the repeated dispute in the area over traffic.
In conclusion, this intervention is supporting the agricultural infrastructure, preserving and providing additional water for irrigating crops, and more importantly, assisting more than 400 marginalized and needy Lebanese and Syrian families in increasing their food security and improving their livelihoods.
