Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a middle-class mother in Beirut, Lebanon. For 14 years, you’ve walked your daughter to the nearby school. You dropped her off at the nursery at age three. She cried when you left then, but now at age 16, the school is her second home. It’s her world – the center of her friends, achievements, and chance for a better future.
Education was always a high priority for your family, but this year, you may have to pull her out of school. Private schools are the main providers of education in Lebanon, and due to its economic crisis and pandemic, you lost your job, and your husband is only getting paid 60% of his salary. Meanwhile, skyrocketing inflation means the cost of other necessities like electricity and food are rising. Always careful with your savings, you’ve been forced to take funds out again and again – if you can at all. When you do, it’s worth a fraction of its initial value. Most people’s savings are stuck in the banks and cannot even be accessed.
This is a real story of a parent at Beirut Baptist School (BBS). It’s the new reality for the majority of families. If you’re a refugee – which one-third of the country are – the outlook is even worse.
Imane, a Syrian mother of four children, enrolled her daughter Amal in one of our partner church-based learning centers with MERATH (a Christian NGO). She and her family fled Aleppo, Syria, seven years ago after ISIS arrived in their area. While they found safety in Lebanon, food security and health have been a huge burden. Thankfully, the church-based education center is one thing she can depend on.
Imane explains, “I got to know the church through my neighbour who had her kids in their education center. My daughter Amal had missed many years of school and I couldn’t even put her in public school because I couldn’t pay for the bus. When I heard that everything is provided for free in this centre, even transportation and all the material, I quickly registered her.”
For context, Lebanon’s two-year plummet into poverty has been brutal. A once middle-class country, now most people have lost their entire life savings in a matter of months. The economic crisis continues to deepen in a vicious cycle of inflation and currency devaluation, leaving 74% of the population living in poverty.
While the Lebanese currency and wages diminish, most food and commercial products are imported, and therefore all items not subsidized by the government are bought at an astronomically high price compared to the value of the Lebanese pound.
Consequently, families who were once economically stable are now finding themselves vulnerable to food insecurity. This has led to significant restructuring in spending priorities. Educational expenses – which were once a top priority for most families – have become a luxury many families can no longer afford.
In Lebanon, public schools are grossly under-funded, and the private sector is assumed to be the primary provider of education. Private schools are seen as necessities, not luxuries, yet as parents fail to meet tuition costs, schools are scrambling to remain open. How do you retain teachers – educated professionals with opportunities to emigrate – without livable salaries?
Should private educational institutions fail, Lebanon’s entire educational structure will collapse.
A mother of three daughters enrolled at BBS, Rawya, wrote, “If it were not for scholarship support, I don’t know what we would have done. Due to the economic crisis, my salary was cut in half. BBS is not an ordinary school—it’s my daughters’ family. The school staff all treat my daughters as their own kids, and whenever we have problems, they are quick to respond.”
The school team is working tirelessly to uphold the integrity of the school’s academic standards, while also supplementing needs – transportation, trauma therapy, community development – far outside the asks of a normal school.
Supported by friends and partners around the world, the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development (LSESD) works through ministries like BBS and partner-led learning centers with MERATH for a singular reason: we are called to live our faith in Christ through proclamation and demonstration.
Schools reach people in a way that churches cannot. Education centers across the country reach refugees who have never stepped inside a church, and 92% of BBS students come from non-Christian homes.
The mission is more than providing families a lifeline and the country a chance to rebuild. Our mission is to bear witness to the love of Christ.
If you’d like to join LSESD in this journey of empowering churches and serving local communities, you can learn more about our work on our LSESD Stewardship partner page.