Lebanese Students Earn Cash Picking ApplesU.S. Government Assistance to Lebanon With U.S. Government funding, the Cooperative Housing Foundation (CHF) launched a nationwide billboard campaign beginning today and lasting a week, to promote Lebanon’s apple production. Within this context, CHF, in partnership with the Rene Moawad Foundation (RMF), organized a field day in Besharre and Ehden, North Lebanon, on Saturday October 14, 2006, to introduce this initiative. The report was featured on local television stations LBC International and Future TV. More than 250 individuals took part in this event, including farmers, university students and unskilled workers. Lebanese students and unskilled workers harvested apples for a $20 remuneration plus transportation, insurance and a meal. To date, the program has provided income to 12,708 individuals in the areas of Jbeil, Batroun, Besharre, Ehden and Dinniyeh. This project offers, for the first time, cash-for-work opportunities for Lebanese students rather than employing foreign labor as has been done in the past. This initiative falls within the U.S. Government-funded Humanitarian Assistance for Lebanon, HAL II program. Funded at a level of $2.6 million, the program aims to improve the ability of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to safely return to their communities by repairing potable and irrigation water systems which were damaged as a result of the summer crisis. The program also supports the needs of an increasing number of physically disabled individuals in South Lebanon. Furthermore, the program started transition into longer-term recovery through linking under-employed university students with apple growers in the midst of the harvest season, in an effort to quickly harvest crops that would otherwise be lost.
October 16, 2006 |
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