Almost half of the population lives under the poverty line, with more than a third living in extreme poverty off of less than 7,000 LBP a day. Many can’t or won’t see how bad it is until a video like this one pops up on social media.
A non-profit called The World Sucks (with its slogan, “Make It Better”) posted a video to raise poverty awareness and encourage people to donate to the neediest.
As a caption, the non-profit wrote, “The situation in Lebanon has become so catastrophic that it has become so common to find people searching in [the] trash.”
The video shows consecutively seven Lebanese citizens and three Syrian refugees looking into the trash to collect food or items. Four of them told the non-profit that they eat from the trash daily.
In the video, one of them was indeed eating food he found in the garbage.
Three others interviewed in the video make ends meet by selling recyclable items from the trash bins. A dirty job, but they have no choice.
During the quarantine, these people can’t stay at home or else they’d starve, and starve their families too. Some, unfortunately, don’t even have homes to shelter themselves from the pandemic.
Leading busy lives, worrying about our own stand-still situation, we often forget to remember the condition of the extremely impoverished. Seeing how they reacted to receiving help (by food or money) is heartwarming and tear-jerking.
The caption continues, “People in Lebanon… (those who are not starving already), please keep a bag of food in your car and hand them something if you see them, it will give them a break.”
“DON’T BE AFRAID to talk to them,” urged the non-profit, “[in] all the encounters we had, they were surprised somebody was talking to them.”
Poverty is an ugly reality, and many people prefer to look away. But showing the reality is a minimum humanitarian duty. They just want to be seen… to at least feel they’re still humans.
Lebanon may be poor, but its people have the richest hearts. The World Sucks is collecting donations for their cause “Save Lebanon.”
(Update: 28/02/2021 – The fundraiser gathered 9,795 euros (about $11,825) for this cause.)