موقع الملتقى النسائي

Table of Index:

1. Activities

2. Educational situation Southern Beirut
   - School buildings and equipments
   - Teaching hours
   - Students background
   - Teaching staff

3. Future Plans

During 2003, a group of female Physicians, University professors, lawyers, teachers and other community workers came together and established:

The Women’s Forum of The Southern Coast of Beirut

Its objective was to add to the alleviation of the suffering of the underprivileged population of that area, by establishing sustainable development processes in the fields of Education and Health

Today The forum has :

1. 100 member

2. A board of directors of 10 members

Chairperson: Dr.Alaweiyeh Farhat

Activities:

1. 2003-2005 : in cooperation with the Municipalities,
   – Cultural activities
   – Health education activities

2. 2005-2006 : restoring and repairing 6 school buildings, and providing it with PCs.

3. 2006-2007 : restoring and repairing 10 school buildings, and providing it with school equipment.

Educational situation in the Southern Coast of Beirut

1. Global Campaign For Education: At the core of the EFA [Education for All] partnership is the belief that education is the key to sustainable development and peace and stability within and among countries, and accordingly that is indispensable for people to participate fully in the societies and globalized economies of the 21st century.

2. Nelson Mandela: “Millions of parents, teachers and children around the world are calling on their governments to provide free, good quality, basic education for all the world’s children. They are part of the Global Campaign for Education; we add our voice to their call.”

3. Haret Hreyk, Ghobeiry, Borj Al-Barajneh and Mreijeh

4. Population : 600,000

5. Basic formal education

   1. School buildings and equipment

   2. Teaching hours

   3. Students

   4. Teaching staff

A- School buildings and equipments:

1. Basic education public schools :

   1. 18 buildings :

      • 9 ordinary living buildings

      • 9 buildings built by citizens for rental as schools

      • 1 school is built by the government to be a school

      • 17 are rented

   2. rooms: 20 m2 for 30 pupils

   3. Not enough bathrooms

   4. Not enough clean water, light or ventilation

   5. No regular maintenance of the buildings by their original owners

   6. High humidity and other public health and hygienic problems

   7. Not enough indoor or outdoor spaces for playing and extracurricular activities (theater, music, painting and other cultural activities).

   8. No electrical generators : schools stop when electricity is cut off

   9. No proper labs for applied sciences

   10. No ICT labs

   11. Not enough classroom chairs, desks, closets, benches

   12. Not enough sport equipments

   13. Not enough first aid supplies

B- Teaching hours:

In each building :

1. one school opens from 7:30am till 12:30pm
   Then, another school will start from 1pm till 6:30pm

2. Of the 42 schools in Lebanon
   which work according to this 2-shifts system,
   34 schools in 18 buildings are present in this area
   to accommodate the number of pupils.

3. Regular schools have 7 teaching hrs. a day; those of a 2 shift school are 5 hrs.

4. A class will take 55 mins. In regular schools, and 45 mins. In the other.

5. Pupils of such schools will loose 30 % of the curriculum

6. School directors will shrink some teaching material and cancel others (mainly, arts, sports, ICT and foreign languages ).

7. Using the building in morning and afternoon shifts will prevent extracurricular activities and any supplementary classes

8. In the afternoon shift, the 13 year old kids will finish school at 6:30pm . It will be dark and some parents would rather not send them to school in such security situation ( one reason for high drop out rate).

C- Students background:

1. Even before the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon 1975, thi area was called the “Misery belt of Beirut”

2. Population is mainly inhabitants of the south of Lebanon who fled the recurrent Israeli aggressions, and inhabitants of the Bekaa valley : both looking for better living conditions in the capital.

3. The misery belt refers to socio-economical, environmental, educational and public health aspects of their life

4. In 34 schools, high rate of drop-outs:

   1. no. of students 1990= 21,000

   2. no. of students 2007= 13,000

D- Teaching staff:

1. Before the war:

   1. Teachers of Governmental schools were graduates of the “ High Institute for Teachers”.

   2. These graduates used to be well qualified and well trained to be teachers.

   3. They used to have fixed governmental jobs with good salaries and other social security privileges.

2. After the war:

   1. The Government started NOT to give these graduates jobs in governmental schools because they are expensive. So, they started to go to the private sector.

   2. Governmental schools started to have short term contracts with unqualified and untrained for teaching graduates with low salaries and social insecurity (5.3$/hr. to be paid by the end of the academic year).

   3. The Lebanese government gave up its responsibility of the educational system to confessional group.

   4. High quality schools are now private and belong to confessional group, which are not accessible to the poor.

   5. Public schools, which are the only place for the underprivileged Lebanese to get a free of charge education irrespective of their religious sect, were devastated during the past 30 years of war and political instability.

The Women’s Forum of The Southern Coast of Beirut will strive to achieve the following:

1. Advocate, lobby and create proper groups to build pressure on the Lebanese government to:

   1. On the short and mid term:

      • Achieve Continuous maintenance, rehabilitation and renovation of the already existing schools.

      • Provide these schools with the lacking equipments

      • Rent enough buildings to stop the 2 shifts system with its curricular and extracurricular consequences

   2. On the long term:

      • work on building enough proper public school to accommodate all under privileged pupils.

2. The Forum will do its best to actively be a part of these processes on the grassroots level.