The warm relationships between the Social Welfare Institutions – Dar Al Aytam Al Islamiya and the area of Akkar go back to the time when this beloved region’s citizens started joining our various Beirut establishments, in the year 1948.

Out of thebelief that existing needs must be answered and in view of the disfavoured situation of the Akkar region, the Complex for Care and Development was created in 2006 in Jdeidet el Kaiteh – Beit el Hosh where it committed itself to serve hundreds of children, youth and orphans by providing them with housing, general and medical care, food, education, professional training and other services. Moreover, the Complex endeavours to support families, women’s issues (by offering them empowerment programs to prepare them to working life) and third age citizens. Furthermore, awareness raising and empowerment programs are offered to all the population categories, and development contests have been organised with local associations in the villages of Jdeidet el Kaiteh, Abdah and Tikreet.

Today the Complex is recognised as a benchmark recourse for people needing assistance in any of the development, care or guidance fields.

Main objectives of the complex:

To build up an efficient participation of each citizen into the progress of the region and to curb the damages affecting the people in need of social care, in particular children, women, disabled and senior citizens; to provide an alternative assistance for difficult social cases; to offer high-quality services to the communities with the aim of a sustainable local development, and to ensure the implementation of the needy and disabled people’s rights.

Services provided by the complex:

Internal assistance:

This department provides comprehensive assistance to orphaned children and people in difficult social situations. It strives to ensure an adequate emotional, mental and social development and carries out aid programs in order to help them overcome their family problems, through the following care services:

-        Early prevention for young girls unit: accomodates 2 year-old to 6 year-old girls and offers them alternative early prevention care and other programs in accordance with their age and suitable to balanced growth requirements.

-        Girls unit: accomodates 7 year-old to 18 year-old girls and offers them health and preventive care, follow-up programs, personal and social empowerment as well as natural capacities reinforcement programs, while taking into account the youth distinctive features, with a view to prepare them to become conscious of their social role, educated and efficient citizens able to raise their family and their environment awareness level.

-        Early prevention for young boys unit: accomodates 2 year-old to 6 year-old boys and offers them alternative early prevention care and other programs in accordance with their age and suitable to balanced growth requirements.

-        Boys unit: accomodates 7 year-old to 12 year-old boys and provides them with health and preventive care, follow-up programs, personal and social empowerment as well as natural capacities reinforcement programs and a preparation to pre-adulthood stage.

-        Youth unit: accomodates 12 year-old to 18 year-old boys and ensures follow-up programs as well as personal and social empowerment and natural capacities reinforcement programs, while taking into account youth distinctive features with a view to prepare the teenagers to become conscious of their social role, educated and efficient citizens able to raise their family and their environment awareness level.

-        Medical centre: supports the beneficiaries personal growth, performs comprehensive medical exams, compulsory vaccinations, adequate treatments and guidance towards health establishments, as the case may be, meanwhile heightening the nurses and staff workers awareness.

Day assistance:

1.         The education department: offers the following day care services to children and young people with disabilities and out of school:

-      The mental development unit: provides day care to people with mental disabilities.

-      The educational upgrading unit: offers the opportunity to young out-of-school people to reinsert into the academic schooling system or to attend specific vocational training, as well as empowerment programs in order to give them the opportunity to succeed in their professional life.

2.         Vocational and fast-track training:

Includes the following six specialised workshops: cosmetics and beauty care for women and men, plumbing, electricity, aluminium, sewing, and provides fast-track training in specific fields requested by the labour market.

3.         Social integration programs:

Incorporates a set of social integration programs specially designed for people with difficulties, which are implemented with the family’s assistance, whether nuclear or extended, and the community. Such programs include a whole range of field activities with a view to promote the right to be different, the acceptance of the beneficiaries capacities as part of equal rights for all without distinction, such as:

-      Support campaigns for people with disabilities’ causes: scientific, social and popular campaigns are organised in order to enhance people with disabilities’ causes, to implement all their rights, in particular their rights to protection, to free expression and to work.

-      Development of friendship links: given the importance of the relations between orphaned and/or out-of-school and/or children with social difficulties, on the one hand, and children linving within their families, on the other, and on the basis of charity and social solidarity, a wide range of diversified in form and substance activities are organised in collaboration with the neighbourhood schools.

4.         Family care:

This service aims to achieve an adequate balance within the family. It acts in order to anticipate and/or fix any difficulties that might occur at the family or individual level, notably in the following fields:

-      Women empowerment: aims at the women who never had any opportunity to study or work. It offers vocational training and empowerment programs in the Akkar villages and builds relations between the beneficiaries and the labour market. It also operates within the families and the beneficiaries’ environment for the recognition of the women’s right to work.

-      Family empowerment: intended for the widows’ and divorcees’ families, it offers them an exhaustive training in order to develop their parental and administrative capacities, by helping them to create their own businesses, and, more generally, by trying to resolve the economical, social and family problems which are hindering their financial self-sufficiency.

-      Early intervention: provides help to mothers of children with disabilities by providing them with an early assessment of their children’s capacities, and further by training them and supplying them with all relevant information. More generally, this care is devoted to achieve educational, social and awareness raising targets.

-      Family planning: is directed to pregnant women, in particular the ones in their first pregnancy, and strives to achieve a level of awareness regarding a healthy procreation and the dangers resulting from the lack of planning.

-      Support to broken-down families: facing the problems resulting from the families disintegration, this program aims at finding solutions to the conflicts and to build a «family consensus» to guarantee sane relationships between parents and children in particular in the cases of divorces, and/or any of the parents’ incarceration or abuse.

-      Parental relationships and family mediation: the surge of inter-generational problems, due to social medias extension and referral multiplication, has become a major challenge at the social and family levels. The program aims at bridging the differences between the parties, strengthening the parents’ guidance and referral capacities and fortifying their relations with the children, the teenagers and the youth.

-      Social empowerment of young brides: underage girls mariage is a characteristic feature of rural communities and, while the efforts to limit it succeed, the Complex provides a full social empowerment program to young brides, tackling all the issues (choice of the groom, relations between the future spouses and their families), giving them the appropriate medical information and trying to balance between the young girls’ dreams and life’s problems. The program ensures awareness-raising, guidance and prevention to cope with the real situation.

-      Youth troubles: this service concerns teenagers and their families within a guidance and awareness task program. The parents are informed of the social change which might endanger their children and instructed with the way to manage them. The youth are made aware of looming social hazards and encouraged to keep a genuine dialogue with their families.

-      Support to children with disabilities’ families: this program helps the families accept their children’s situation by providing them with practical proceedings to solve or alleviate their problems and to build up a sane and protective environment for the concerned children.

-      Housing upgrading for most disfavoured families: this service brings together specialised business managers and building craftsmen with a view to upgrade the most disfavoured families’ dwellings.

5.         Health social assistance:

The complex includes the following departments:

-      Overall healthcare: a general practice office ensures a regular monitoring of the beneficiaries and keeps watch over their welfare and health.

Moreover, a number of diversified social, sanitary, support and awareness services have been recently created to answer the local population’ requirements.

-      Care for the mentally disabled: on the basis of the right of the disabled to medical assistance and in consideration of the importance of oral health and its effect on general health, this department endeavours to remedy the lack of oral health care and to alert disabled children’s parents and to enable them to asssist their children.

-      Auditory and visual impairments early screening unit: provides early detection of auditory and visual impairments to all the Akkar population age groups and, as the case may be, supplies them with advice and preventive measures.

On the other hand, the Complex organises alertness sessions to all social categories on issues such as autoimmune diseases, drug addiction, advertising negative impact, domestic violence, people with disabilities’ sexual abuse and other social health problems.

6.         Social clubs: the Complex includes a number of clubs to achieve individual and group dynamics and to support the social roles’ importance and synergy, by providing entertainment, awareness and stimulation programs to children, senior citizens and volunteers:  

-      The children palace: offers recreational activities during the school holidays to the region children and implements their right to leisure, to their natural capacities development and to the achievement of an efficient social cooperation.

-      Al Omr Al Madeed Club for senior citizens: aims at boosting senior citizens’ social role recognition and offers them assistance and social and recreational activities.

-      The Club for disabled senior citizens: assists disabled senior citizens, more particurly the ones who never benefited from special care, and provides them with basic programs and overall protection in case of prospective family alterations.

Volunteers club: strives to stimulate the general interest for social causes and encourages children, teenagers, youth, young and professional volunteering, according to individual capacities, with a view to achieve the community growth and progress. It presently hosts volunteers specialised in the medical, handicraft, social training, specialised learning and assistance fields and endeavours to attract people of all ages and professions.