PLACE: Municipalities of Sehaile and Fatqa, Mount Lebanon Region.
DURATION: 36 months (project end date December 2020)
APPLICANT: Cooperation in the World’s Territories (CTM) – ASeS
LOCAL PARTNER: Non-governmental social organization “Oum el Nour”

The overall goal of the project is to help prevent drug addiction and improve the socioeconomic conditions of drug addicts and former drug addicts in Lebanon to reduce the social and economic inequalities that contribute to making them even more vulnerable and marginalized subjects in Lebanese society.
The specific objective is to strengthen prevention, rehabilitation, and social and economic reintegration services targeting drug addicts and former drug addicts in Lebanon through capacity building both in terms of reception and vocational reintegration training offerings of local counterpart Oum el Nour, a nonprofit social NGO highly specialized in prevention, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs for drug addicts. The related expected results are as follows:

  1. Remodeled rehabilitation and reintegration facilities at the Fatqa Women’s Center and Sehaile Men’s Center, managed by Oum el Nour;
  2. Strengthened training capacity and offerings and initiated sustainable inclusive business activities targeting drug addicts housed in rehabilitation facilities in Oum el Nour;
  3. Increased awareness of drug addiction issues among adolescents, youth and adults in Lebanon;
  4. Strengthened the personal and professional skills of Oum el Nour staff in specific training techniques of addicted individuals (at psychological, social, family and individual levels) and in identification, formulation and managerial management of projects.

To strengthen the training capacity and offerings and initiate sustainable inclusive business activities aimed at drug addicts housed in Oum el Nour’s rehabilitation facilities, the project will promote social farming, an activity that partially exists in the Men’s Center and is to be fully initiated in the Women’s Center, through land preparation, crop selection, creation of enclosures, purchase of small livestock and increasing honey production, with the goal of increasing from 400 kg (2015) to 1,200 kg and preparing for the subsequent marketing phase. These activities will be accompanied by training courses held by Italian industry experts, who will also provide follow up, aimed at dedicated Oum el Nour staff on business start-up and management, quality control and product marketing, and social cooperative training. Staff will also have the opportunity to conduct study visits to social farms in Italy. User-friendly manuals with course content will be developed and published.