Tomorrow I am leaving for Lebanon.
This is a big milestone for World Faith (the interfaith service project organization we are starting here in NYC), as this is our first international project. We are taking 10 religiously diverse students from New York to team up with religiously diverse Lebanese students to do some service learning projects, including volunteering at a Palestinian refugee school, as well as leading interfaith dialogue trainings at a local university, which also may be televised.
This comes at a tamulchuous time, as Lebanon was put on the Travel Warning list for the State Dept again this October, and they currently do not have a president. Though I want to enjoy this project to its fullest, I realized that unlike my previous travels where I was alone, I now have responsibility for others, in a time and place prone to disaster. Disaster has been the greatest identifying mark for Lebanon in my mind, as my experience of the Lebanese evacuation in 2006 still hovers in the back of my head.
However, I look forward to what is in store for us. I will be staying an extra week after the project to meet with local leaders of the NGO and non-profit world in order to see if we can build a team of mobilized students to more consistently do work in Beirut, as we do in New York. If any one reading this knows people in Lebanon who would be interested in meeting, please let me know and feel free to email your contact and cc me (frank@worldfaith.org). Hope all is well with everyone and your families.
Happy New Year!
