Embrace works closely with a number of different organisations in Beirut and across Lebanon. Our dear friend and partner Sylvia Haddad, who works as the Director of the JCC, shared this touching update from the midst of a refugee camp during the Covid 19 outbreak.

With a population of over 19 million people, Cairo is a city that teams with life. Cars, trucks, minibuses and small motorbikes, often overloaded with passengers, compete with each for dominance on the congested highways that crisscross the city.

At the beginning of August this year, an explosion in the port of Beirut shook Lebanon, a country already on its knees. Here, Reem Haddad, daughter of our friend and partner Sylvia from the Joint Christian Committee (JCC), tells us how the youth of the camps have worked together in providing an extraordinary response to the disaster.

Our friend and partner, Sister Bridget Tighe, is General Director of Caritas Jerusalem. In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic and as the possibility of the annexation of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories draws closer, she sent us these reflections.

Marc Falconer is a member of Embrace the Middle East’s Scottish Volunteer Hub and a student in Divinity at the University of Aberdeen. He currently lives in Jerusalem, and here shares his perspective on the Covid-19 outbreak and its impact upon our friends and partners in the region.

There will be countless lessons that we take away from this time of isolation brought about by Corona Virus – many positive, as well as some less so.