At Cedars Network, one of the ways we aim to collaborate with marginalized peoples as they pursue restored communities is through our health, education, and livelihood projects working together.

Um Waliid is a young widow in the camp settlement where we run our projects. She is one of forty-five widows in the settlement who care for their families by themselves. Culturally, the other men from Um Waliid’s extended family should help her care for her kids, but in the current environment they’re not even able to take care of their own families. The men around her came to us and asked if we could help provide for her and the other widows in her community.

As our camp school reopened following the Covid quarantine, our education project needed to institute new levels of sanitation and cleaning and we were able to give Um Waliid the opportunity to serve at the center. She works afternoons and weekends harvesting potatoes to make ends meet. 

Recently while harvesting potatoes, she was accidentally shot in the leg by a neighboring shepherd! We were able to help with her initial hospital bills through our emergency relief fund that is funded by generous partners like you. Additionally, our health team is reaching out to her, offering help with her wound care, medical follow up, and trauma care from the incident to make sure our friend and colleague is restored and able to continue to provide for her family.

Living among the beautiful mountains of the Middle East, Abu Hamed is a middle-aged man caught in a difficult situation. He has had to flee his country due to war and his family can only eat if he finds work in a neighboring country. Some weeks, he will get one day of work out of ten, which causes his family to be without food and drink for a long time!

One day, some of our Network visited his camp wanting to help those in need. One of those visiting was one of our local partners, Abu Jaafer, who met Abu Hamed and shared with him that he is loved and that Cedars Network wants to help people like his family. When Abu Hamed heard from Abu Jaafer that his family could receive a food voucher that could be redeemed for food at a local supermarket, providing his family with enough food to feed them for a few weeks, he was elated! He could provide for his family! His life was changed.

He would later share with Abu Jaafer, “This food voucher gave me new life. The kids were falling asleep hungry. My wife was falling asleep weeping. Now they are happy again.”

When Abu Jaafer, one of our local collaborators, was visiting a local group of refugee families to learn more about the challenges they are facing, he encountered Abu Hussein. Through brief conversation, he learned that Abu Hussein has kids attending Hope Learning Center (one of our learning centers). He shared about how cold the winter gets where they live and how it’s hard to earn money for his family. Abu Jaafer shared with him that Cedars Network can provide help for him in the form of a food voucher and Abu Hussein started to laugh with joy!

A few months after using the voucher to purchase food for his family, Abu Hussein invited Abu Jaafer into his home. He greeted him by saying, “I’m not very rich, but my family has food. Life is hard here, but our lives have been changed because of the food vouchers.”