Home > CtC worldwide > Europe & Middle East > Lebanon > ARC
____________________________________________________________________
Lebanon

Arab Resource Collective (ARC)
Country: Lebanon
Tel: 00 961 1 742075
Fax: 00 961 1 742077
E-mail: ctc@mawared.org
Web Site: www.mawared.org
Contact Name: Ms Joumanah Zabaneh

Organisation of Child-to-Child Activities

ARC over the last 15 years has been acting as a support system to local NGOs in the field: developing and adapting resources, publishing a newsletter, providing material on the website, organising thematic and capacity building regional and local workshops, supporting local CtC resource groups, integrating the CtC approach into child rights, youth and early childhood materials and programmes. The regional programme works with partners in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and its resources have an outreach into other Arab countries. The first CtC book to present the approach was translated and published in Arabic in 1983 by 2 people who later participated in founding ARC (1988) and helped CtC to be an integral part of its regional programme of resource production and capacity building. Education Action International and other European NGOs fund the programme and the CtC Trust provides resources, expertise and advice.

Child-to-Child Activities:

The focus of the activities is children's individual health awareness and behaviour as well as health awareness in the community and in schools. Activities are organised by:

1. ARC's coordinating team, including one individual coordinator for the regional CtC programme; the coordinator has community health background experience in working with NGOs and directly with children.
2. A regional resource group from partners involved in assessing needs and planning and implementing activities.
3. Local resource groups when organising local workshops.

There are probably over two hundred social and educational workers, facilitators, and teachers from NGOs, schools, government sector, etc. working with children and young people in various Arab countries. They are adults of various ages, approximately 60% women, and tend to be from the middle classes. Work is done through training and the dissemination of resources addressing community workers and through the organisations that work with them: summer activities, non-formal activities after school, school clubs, etc. Partners use stories, animation, creative art, and music and ARC provides partners with resources on participation (manuals etc. …) and organises workshops on the topic. The Child-to-Child step approach is also used in planning workshops in other areas (child rights, early childhood, youth … ).

Monitoring and Evaluation of Child-to-Child Activities

We have not conducted a systematic process of monitoring, but have had at least one external evaluation of the regional programme, as well as collective reviews by groups of partners. Evaluations have found that active learning and participation of children and parents is increasing in a number of CtC-specific projects at the community level and in schools in various Arab countries. A regional workshop on monitoring and evaluation was convened and indicators developed. Field visits and participation in local workshops and other activities are opportunities to document and assess implementation.

Training

Our trainers conduct trainings in CtC, child rights and early childhood development, advocacy, etc. They tend to be workers and volunteers in partner organisations who train teachers, health workers, social workers, youth, KG teachers, child rights advocates. Our trainings cover the CtC approach in all its components, active learning methods, animation, children's participation, child rights, identification of needs and challenges, mapping and networking.

Use, Adaptation, Translation and Production of Child-to-Child Materials

We don’t use the materials in English. We have translated and adapted into Arabic:

• Materials from the newsletter for the programme’s Arabic newsletter,
• The resource book in two volumes,
• The readers,
• Rebuilding young lives,
• Children, health and sciences (with UNESCO),
• Various ad hoc materials.

We have heavily adapted the Trust’s draft training booklets, added materials and produced an original "Animator's Pack" in Arabic for CtC facilitators in 3 volumes. The work was done collectively by a team of practitioners.

Date: 2005
Source : ARC