Just.Childhood

في هذا العيد، نتمنى أن تحمل الأيام القادمة شيئًا من الطمأنينة والسلام لكل طفل وكل عائلة.

وبينما نجتمع مع من نحب، تبقى قلوبنا مع أطفال لبنان وفلسطين، وتحديدًا غزة، الذين ما زالوا يعيشون الخوف والفقدان والحرمان كل يوم.

إلى جميع العائلات والأطفال والمجتمعات التي نعمل معها ونكبر معها يومًا بعد يوم، نتمنى لكم عيدًا يحمل لحظات من الفرح والدفء والأمل، رغم كل الظروف والتحديات.

نتمنى أن يكون العيد القادم أكثر أمانًا، وأكثر استقرارًا، وأكثر رحمة بالأطفال وبالعائلات التي تستحق أن تعيش بكرامة وسلام.

من أسرة Just.Childhood، عيد مبارك وكل عام وأنتم بخير

This holiday season, we hope the days ahead bring more peace and comfort to every child and every family.

As we gather with our loved ones, our hearts remain with the children of Lebanon and Palestine, especially Gaza, who continue to endure fear, loss, and hardship every day.

To all the families, children, and communities we work and grow with every day, we wish you a holiday filled with warmth, hope, and moments of joy despite all challenges.

We hope the next holiday arrives with more safety, stability, and dignity for every child and every family who deserves to live in peace.

From all of us at Just.Childhood, Eid Mubarak!

❤️

We are looking for you. 🧡

Just.Childhood currently has three open positions in Beirut, and we would love to hear from passionate, dedicated people who want to do meaningful work with and for children and communities.

M&E Officer (Part-time) — If you are detail-oriented, love data, and want to help us understand and improve our impact, this one is for you. 👉 Apply here: justchildhood.org/jobs/

Kindergarten Educator — Join our Bait al-Shams team in Sabra and bring Waldorf early childhood education to children who deserve nothing less than the very best start. 👉 Apply here: justchildhood.org/jobs/

Volunteer – Social Work — A wonderful opportunity for students or recent graduates in social work, psychology, or education to gain hands-on experience while contributing to our community. 👉 Apply here: justchildhood.org/jobs

All three positions are based in Sabra, Beirut. The application deadline for all roles is 31 May 2026.

Please note: only applications submitted through the online forms above will be considered. Applications sent by email cannot be accepted.

Know someone who might be a great fit? Share this post — the right people are out there.

A big day for our preschoolers at Bait al-Shams!

This week, our preschool children took their very first steps into the next chapter — visiting the UNRWA school where many of them will continue their journey after the summer.

They were welcomed with warmth by the school manager and the whole team, in a space that felt inviting and safe. There was cake and juice — because every milestone deserves a little celebration — and each child went home with a folder packed with colours, clay, a notebook, and paper.

Watching them explore the classrooms, curious and bright-eyed, was a reminder of why we do what we do. The transition from kindergarten to school is one of the most important moments in a child’s early life — and today, it felt just a little less unknown.

Here’s to our children and the adventures ahead. 🧡

.entwicklung.zukunft

May 15 is Nakba Day — يوم النكبة — the day Palestinians around the world mark the catastrophe of 1948, when more than 750,000 people were expelled from their homes and villages to make way for the establishment of the State of Israel. Over 530 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed. Families were torn from their land, their olive trees, their lives. Those who fled — or were driven out — were never allowed to return.

At Bait al-Shams, many of our children are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who lived through exactly this. They were born in Sabra and Shatila, a refugee camp that is itself a testament to a wound that has never fully healed.

As every year, we gathered — Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Sudanese children, side by side — to hold this day together, the way we believe children best hold big and heavy things: through story, through song, through the hands and the heart. We listened to tales of the old villages. We heard the names of places that no longer exist except in memory. We sang. We made things with our hands that connected to the richness of Palestinian culture and heritage.

Because memory is not only for adults. Children, too, deserve to know where they come from — not to carry a burden, but to understand who they are. And when Palestinian children sit alongside children who have also known displacement and loss, something quietly profound happens. They recognise each other.

The right of return — the right of Palestinian refugees to go back to their homeland — remains one of the longest unresolved injustices of our time, enshrined in international law and denied in practice for 77 years. At Just.Childhood, we cannot resolve this. But we can make sure that, even here, in a camp in Beirut, the children know their story — and know it with dignity.

🔑

For the second time, we are running Module 2 of our Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher Training — and this round is special: educators who missed the first cycle now have the chance to join and complete the full three-year certification alongside their colleagues.

Six days dedicated to understanding the young child. What does it mean to walk, to talk, to think for the first time? What does a child between three and seven actually need — and what happens when we truly make space for imagination and self-directed play?

Led by Jill Taplin and .naju , and supported by IASWECE, participants explore these questions through theory, practice, and their own hands: singing together to build confidence in the voice, and crafting a simple cushion doll — the kind of unhurried, meaningful making that we ask children to do every day, and that educators need to experience themselves first.

🌱

Down Town Beirut. 60 children. One circle to start.

Songs, music, a bit of movement — and slowly, the space shifted. That is how it usually goes. You don’t force it. You create the conditions and let the children find their way in.

There was free drawing, there was laughter, there was teamwork. And then the parachute — everyone underneath it, sheltered, together. It is a small thing and it is also not a small thing at all.

Some parents joined in too, which made us particularly happy. Sitting alongside their children, playing, being present. In moments like these, togetherness does something that nothing else quite can.

In Karantina, our emergency pedagogy sessions have become a fixture — indoors, and out in the park nearby when the day allows. Rhythm, movement, play. The basics that children living under extremely unstable conditions need more than anything.

But our team kept noticing something the sessions alone couldn’t reach. So as a response, our psychologist Fayrouz designed art therapy sessions around what the children were actually carrying: first a space to release it, then to share it with others, then to imagine past it. My Tomorrow, My Hope. Children drawing futures. Naming things they want. The room, by all accounts, felt lighter.

Art therapy is not extra. In the middle of a war, it might be the most direct thing we can offer.

Yesterday, we set up in the open air — between the buildings of a collective shelter in Downtown Beirut — for the first time.

Around 54 children and young people were there, some still far from home, still waiting to return to the southern suburbs of Beirut or to their villages in South Lebanon. We brought movement, singing, and storytelling. Twenty of them wandered into the drama therapy session, drawn in by curiosity.

The space between the buildings became a room full of life. Parents sat close, watching, a few joining in.

This is what our emergency pedagogy work looks like right now: twice a week, our team travels to two different collective shelters — and continues the work back at our own centres. Together with and with the support of Notfallpädagogik - Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e.V.and Aktion Deutschland Hilft we are doing these mobile interventions — because the displacement is not over, and neither is the need.

According to official Lebanese government figures from 30 April 2026, over 119,000 people — more than 31,000 families — remain in shelters across the country.

🍓 Spring came a little late to Bait al-Shams this year — but it came.

After weeks of disruption and uncertainty, we cautiously found our way back to the familiar rhythm of our days: the morning circle, the songs, the smell of beeswax and wood.

And then — strawberries.

Mothers and children gathered in the kitchen together, sorting fruit, stirring pots, filling jars with the deep red of a season we had almost missed. There is something quietly powerful about making jam: it asks for patience, for presence, for hands working side by side.

The next morning, we held our spring festival. A little belated, yes — but perhaps all the more felt for it.

Spring does not ask whether the timing is right. It simply arrives. And so did we. 🌸

Kindernothilfe E.V. Taawon Lebanon مؤسسة التعاون - لبنان Amna - formerly Refugee Trauma Initiative