Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a non-religious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon.
Like many global partners of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Compassion Protestant Society (CPS), the diaconal arm of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL), is working to cultivate thriving lives for vulnerable families. In 2021 alone, CPS assisted nearly 2,000 families.
The numbers put up by The Pittsburgh Promise over the last 13 years are astounding: to date, the organization has funded higher education for 10,635 students, helping them attend 142 institutions by raising more than $160 million in scholarships. Students are awarded $5,000 in scholarships annually for their four years of post-secondary education, with a series of support systems in place to make sure they’re grounded even as they study toward securing a credential.
To accompany congregations on their missional journey, mission co-workers periodically return to the U.S. to travel around the country for interpretation assignment.
Members of the Syria Lebanon Partnership Network met Tuesday for a one-hour virtual training session for individuals who want to join them in lobbying U.S. representatives for a reduction of economic sanctions in Syria.
More than 894 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in 155 countries, about 5.9% of the global population, including 209 million doses in the U.S., according to Bloomberg News. But the availability of vaccine varies greatly around the world, with smaller countries finding themselves a distant priority.
From October 2019 through the beginning of 2021 and for the foreseeable future, Lebanon continues to navigate its way through four simultaneous crises that compound the challenges faced by all who live here: political corruption; economic collapse; COVID-19 and the resulting health-care crisis; and recovering from the Beirut Port blast of Aug. 4, 2020. These crises have left young adults in Lebanon without hope for their future. No employment possibilities mean no capacity to marry and start a family. In this context, it has been easy to withdraw into one’s own community and to blame others, whoever they may be.
Relief efforts are under way in Beirut to help the more than 300,000 people displaced by the Aug. 4 port explosion that is now being called among the five strongest blasts in human history.
