Fifth Anniversary of the Fratelli Project
The Fratelli Project celebrated 5 years of mission in Lebanon in April. The project, founded by the Marist and De La Salle Brothers, has as its mission “to provide socio-educational support to disadvantaged and vulnerable children and youth, focusing on Lebanese in need and refugees displaced from their countries due to war and violence”. Since 2016, more than 3,000 children and youth have benefited from various socio-educational programmes.
Supported at the beginning by the Fratelli Council, Brothers Andrés Porras Gutiérrez, FSC, and Miquel Cubeles, FMS, formed the first Fratelli community. As time went by, other Brothers and volunteers formed the Community.
Fratelli is currently made up of a fixed community of three Brothers: Miquel Cubeles, FMS, Esteban Ortega, FMS, and Gilbert Ouilabegue Oueidigue, FSC. On the occasion of Fratelli’s fifth anniversary, the three brothers give their views on the Fratelli Project over the past five years.
Br. Gilbert Ouilabegue Oueidigue
“With the arrival of Brothers Miquel Cubeles (Marist) and Andrés Porras (De La Salle), the Project took shape in November 2015, in Bouchrieh (Beirut). Subsequently, in March 2016, after settling in Rmeileh, it consolidated its identity. Since then, the Fratelli Project has become a point of reference that brings to life the Italian concept of FRATELLI (Fraternity), which welcomes people from all over the world.
During these five years in Lebanon, the two congregations of Marist Brothers and De La Salle Brothers have really become one, both literally and figuratively. Through its direct involvement, the Fratelli Project is recognised by the Lebanese Ministry of the Interior and the non-formal education directorate of the Ministry of National Education sees in Fratelli a privileged partner and a constant reference.
With the Fratelli Project, all the speeches and invitations of Pope Francis (trip to Abu Dhabi, the encyclical Fratelli Tutti and the last trip to Iraq) are concretised in the actions and programmes of Fratelli Lebanon. Every day, thanks to our programmes, a rapprochement is taking place, albeit very slowly but surely, between Christians and Muslims, between Syrian and Iraqi refugees and the Lebanese host population. With the economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic and all its consequences, especially after the explosion of the Beirut Port, the Fratelli Project has helped to mitigate the direct negative effects on the affected families and the local populations of Rmeileh and Bourj Hammoud where the two socio-educational centres of the Fratelli Project are located.
Personally, I feel directly involved in the five years of Fratelli, even though I have only been with the project for three and a half years. From what I have been able to experience and share both at the community level and the experiences of the beneficiaries (Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians, etc.), the Fratelli Project is a more than necessary and significant work for the complex region of the Middle East. From these five years of Fratelli I have the following conviction: it is possible, despite our differences, to live and love each other, considering all of us as Brothers and Sisters in humanity, whatever our origins and backgrounds.
So now more than yesterday, Fratelli is and remains more than necessary after these first five years in Lebanon”.
Br. Miquel Cubeles
“These years have been years of blessing, full of reasons to thank God for the call to be brothers, to serve the most vulnerable with a towel wrapped around our necks and to speak to them without knowing the Arabic language, of goodness, of peace, of reconciliation, of the presence of the one God. To give thanks for being able to welcome and accompany so many people and, with presence and affection, to heal the wounds that traumatic situations have caused and continue to cause. Thank you for the gift of being a brother… and for hearing it from the mouths of the children and young people who from the first thing in the morning say hundreds of times …. “frèeeeere frère”. Read the complete testimony
Br. Esteban Ortega
“Fratelli is a challenge and a challenge to build community, it is a permanent commitment to universal brotherhood, a forum for life and growth in which children and young people can recreate and grow. Fratelli becomes concrete in every gesture, every action, in every service that builds fraternity”.
Other testimonies
Valdicer Fachi, FMS, member of the Fratelli Council, celebrating 5 years “is a reason to thank God for the care and attention given to migrant and vulnerable children and young people in Lebanon. Thanks to the brothers, lay people, volunteers, and educators of Fratelli. It is a reason to evaluate the road travelled and to look to the future with more experience and renewing processes”.
Some lay members of Fratelli have also expressed their opinion on the meaning of the Project for them:
“A mission of the Church for Lebanon, a force beyond many borders for the development of our humanity” (Claire Said).
“Education, guidance and growth opportunities for vulnerable children and youth, especially refugees” (Edouard Jabre).
“Love, love for human souls regardless of colour or race, it is for them that God’s smile shines through the eyes of Fratelli’s children” (Hoda El Hajjar).
Fratelli Project, five years and more…
Br. Miquel Cubeles
In September 2015, Brother Andrés Porras, a De La Salle Brother, and myself, Brother Miquel, a Marist Brother, responded to the invitation of our respective Superiors General to launch the Fratelli Project in Lebanon. The initiative was framed in the context of the calls of the last General Chapters of both congregations: on the one hand, the call to go to “… new lands” (FMS) and, on the other, to go “beyond borders” (FSC). In both cases, the expressions were not restricted only to geography, but to the peripheries of personal, cultural, congregational, and structural constraints where the needs of children and young people were most pressing. Pope Francis, in November 2014, addressed a letter to all consecrated persons urging us to consider the prophetic witness of congregations working together. Being two families of Brothers who were already collaborating in other projects, we were now offered the opportunity to “… create “other forums” where we could develop the evangelical logic of the gift of fraternity, of welcoming diversity and mutual love.”
Thus, Fratelli was born, as a call to bet on and share the gift of fraternity in realities so threatened and divided by war in many places in the world. One of those places was and still is Syria. The war in Syria had started in the month of March 2011 and millions of refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Lebanon, a small country of 10,400 km2 welcomed and continues to welcome one and a half million of these refugees of which 600,000 were children and young people.
I read the letter of the Superiors General. I welcomed the news and the personal invitation at the height of the Easter season, in the year when we were preparing to celebrate the Marist bicentenary by highlighting the mission among the poorest. In the middle of the “Montagne year”.
I did not think that I could respond to the initiative, but I welcomed it as a gift, as a challenge to grow in my vocation as a brother at the side of the poor and so it was that we set out with confidence in Jesus and Mary to meet the people for whom no one was caring… And in Lebanon we found hundreds and thousands of children and young people whose fundamental rights were violated: the right to a dignified life, the right to housing, to food, to health care, to education…..
And here was our main challenge: to be brothers in fraternal community offering socio-educational services for so many children who had never set foot in a school or who had to leave it because of the war. We met Iraqi children, Christians threatened and expelled by Daesh, settled as best they could in the outskirts of Beirut; with a multitude of Syrian children crammed into shelters with their families in the city of Saida (Sidon) and its surroundings.
And there we settled as Fratelli community, first in Bourj Hammous, next to Beirut and later in Rmeileh, next to Sidon. From January 2016 we launched socio-educational programs trying to respond to the needs of refugees and Lebanese. The community was enriched with other brothers and lay volunteers and of course with a human team to implement the socio-educational tasks. For more than five years we have been trying to sow seeds of fraternity that have borne much fruit in the hearts of more than 4000 children and their families.
These years have been years of blessing, full of reasons to thank God for the call to be brothers, to serve the most vulnerable with a towel wrapped around our necks and to speak to them without knowing the Arabic language, of goodness, of peace, of reconciliation, of the presence of one God. To give thanks for being able to welcome and accompany so many people and with the presence and affection to heal the wounds that traumatic situations have caused and continue to cause. Thank you for the gift of being a brother… and for hearing it from the mouths of the children and young people who from the first hour of the morning say hundreds of times…. “frèeeeere” frère.
At the end of 2019, a serious social, economic, political crisis occurred in Lebanon, which has led the country to the worst session of its history after the civil war. More than 60% of the Lebanese live below the poverty line, and it is no longer only Iraqis and Syrians or Palestinians…; most of the Lebanese population lives poorly; food, medicines, fuel are scarce… And, as if that were not enough, as everywhere else in the world the pandemic caused by COVID 19 has added to the serious situation and has not allowed us to develop programs normally. Also, the effects of destruction and the political consequences after the explosion in the port of Beirut are still present. Corruption is still in place and many young people have lost hope. There are many who want to leave the country in search of new opportunities… also our educators. A life lesson for me that reaffirms the need for the project in spite of the difficulties we are going through. They need us. I am sure that St. John Baptist de La Salle and St. Marcellin Champagnat would be creative and daring and with confidence in God they would give their all. Let us hope that we, their brothers, know how to do the same; to continue betting on the poorest with no other means than our witness as brothers.
Today I received the invitation to write this little testimony and the programmes are returning to a certain normality… and it happens to be May 31, the Feast of the Visitation. Mary, full of God’s grace, set out on her journey. We, like her, want to continue walking to meet the neediest and sing our Magnificat. Our soul glorifies you Lord because you have looked upon our littleness. Only in simplicity do you do great things. Lord, continue to work wonders in us, in Fratelli at the side of the refugees and the most vulnerable people. Only if we are authentic brothers will Fratelli bear much fruit as Pope Francis told us.
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Br. Miquel Cubeles, Lebanon, May 31, Visitation Day.