Skate park for Lebanese and Syrian children (since 2023)

The educational and future prospects of Syrian refugees in Aarsal are extremely limited. Many young people leave school early to earn money for their families. To provide opportunities for children to have fun and reduce tensions between Lebanese and Syrian children, we Green Helmets built a skate park in the fall of 2023. For this project, we worked together with “skateaid” by Titus Dittmann. The organization helped us design the ramps and donated the skateboards. The skate courses are supervised by local employees of a partner organization. The materials and courses are financed by your Green Helmets donations!

Training for young craftspeople (since 2018)

In May 2018, we launched a carpentry training course for Syrian refugees, which aims to teach young Syrians the basic elements of the carpentry trade in order to improve their career prospects in Lebanon. The skills can also help them to build a new livelihood if they are able to return to Syria. The workshops were initially held in the southern Lebanese city of Saida, but like our other projects, they are now based in the town of Arsal, in a workshop that we have set up especially for this purpose. We have also opened up participation to Lebanese people of all ages, as many Lebanese also live in poverty. As a result, our “Carpentry for Future” project is now also a meeting place for Lebanese and refugees from Syria.

Accommodation and schools for Syrian refugees in Aarsal (2017-2024)

We have worked in the refugee camps in the border town of Aarsal for many years. The work on site was mainly carried out by our local team, which consisted of Syrian refugees. In constantly changing projects, we tried to make the living conditions of the refugees in the tent camps a little more bearable with construction projects.

We reinforced the tents of more than 800 families with robust roofs to protect them against snow in winter and sweltering heat in summer. We have also installed new electrics in the tent shelters – in the largest Green Helmets project of all time. This was because the unprofessional wiring often led to dangerous fires. We have also helped schools to build additional classrooms or shelters for breaks. We also financed the operation of a private school run by the Belgian-Syrian organization “SB Overseas” for several years in order to counteract the lack of school places.

With the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, many Syrians were able to return home. We have therefore relocated our work for these people to Syria since 2025 (see here).

Help for Beirut (August to September 2020)

After the devastating explosions in the port of Beirut, we spent five weeks working in the Karantina district. We built windows and doors for needy families to make their homes habitable again. Together with some of our Syrian employees from Arsal, we set up an open-air workshop in the middle of Karantina – where we sawed, planed and glued. We then installed the finished components in the apartments.

Aid project for Syrian refugees in a concrete shell building (2017-2018)

Our work in Lebanon began in 2017 in a huge shell of a building in the city of Saida, which housed around 1,500 Syrian refugees. Some of them had been living there for six years. One of the things we worked on in the shell was the sewage system. Some of the pipes were leaking, meaning that wastewater was seeping into living spaces and the school on the first floor, causing illness.