Sport changing lives for young Syrian refugees

With your help Youth Sport Trust International remains committed to supporting the pioneering cricket programme set up by the Alsama Project in refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon.  What started as an open opportunity for young refugees – boys and girls alike - to have fun and try out a new game they had never seen before has turned into a passion for many, bringing hope and helping them to develop their inner strength and full potential. Cricket has become a firm fixture in Alsama’s educational and rehabilitative initiatives with regular training sessions and competition taking place.  Embraced by girls, cricket has also become a force for female empowerment, promoting equity and equality and changing long held views about gender stereotypes.

Most of the young Syrian refugees living in Shatila camp in Beirut, Lebanon arrived in 2014 from the northeastern part of their country which had been captured by Daesh (Islamic State) at the time.   Their new home was a dangerous, overcrowded place offering no access to education.  Shatila is still a dangerous and overcrowded place but the Alsama Project has established three secondary schools offering a broad education curriculum and their students are flourishing.  A further school has been set up at the Bourj al Barajneh camp in Beirut.  Evaluations show that illiteracy is eliminated within the first three months of students joining and attendance rate is above 97%.   It’s not all study at Alsama schools.  As well as cricket and yoga, music is being introduced and students have already written and performed the first ever opera in Shatila and published a magazine about their experience of war and living in a refugee camp.

We can’t change the past but please help to change the future for young Syrian refugees by supporting this project.

THANK YOU