Following Israel's initiation of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon, over half a million people have been made homeless. These people have been forced into makeshift shelters, and it's impossible to overstate how little stability, security or infrastructure they have access to right now. Many of them lack food, clean water, basic medicine or sanitary products, or dignified quarters for themselves and their families to sleep, yet efforts to supply aid and shelter are struggling to cope with the scale of this crisis.

Because the scale of strikes and the areas affected were completely unexpected, the state and international organisations are completely unable to respond to the scale of the problem. Government ministries are coordinating with the cooperative and volunteer organisations including the Beirut Solidarity Initiative and (outside Beirut) the Chouf Youth Initiative over which supplies are needed in shelters (which have been set up overnight), and they are leaning heavily on these volunteer efforts to acquire, organise and distribute emergency provisions.

Not only are these organisations inundated by the unfathomable scale of this displacement crisis, but they are hugely cash-strapped and hampered by Lebanon's ongoing financial crisis: there is no way for them to sustain support to this many people if they do not receive further support, and no network at all in place to support these refugees unless they can deliver.

Anything you can donate will go directly towards provisions for refugees in Lebanon.

I'm organising this fundraiser with my friend, who lives in Beirut and is directly involved with the organisations named here and is helping to coordinate their international aid outreach.

||The Plan||

The Beirut Solidarity Collective and Chouf Youth Initiative and are aiming to deal with the crisis by bulk-buying and distributing the following:

・Food

・Medicine

・Mattresses

・Hygiene products

They are then distributing them to the emergency refugee shelters which have been set up over the last 2 days. These shelters have been repurposed at the last minute from schools, some of which have up to 750 people in with as many as five families per room often with no working facilities whatsoever and nothing but a stone floor to sleep on.

Due to Lebanon's financial crisis, most of the population doesn't have bank accounts and if they do they're Lebanese denoted. This means that it's impossible for most people to either withdraw money, or (if they can) to bulk buy on credit – a huge obstacle for a volunteer organisation, and a reason they are so desperate for donations.

||About the organisations||

The Beirut Solidarity Collective is a group of pre-existing co-operatives and volunteer networks in Beirut distributing aid to displaced people in shelters in and outside Beirut from the central location of Hostel Beirut.

@hostel_beirut

The Chouf Youth Initiative is a youth group in Chouf-Lebanon that commenced its efforts in response to the Israeli aggression on Lebanon. This initiative's primary goal is to address the needs of displaced individuals from the heavily impacted regions. The initiative was a collaborative effort involving these three established entities:

@saramadateam

@darsalwa.lb

@dekenetalnes