Addressing Barriers to Education for 330 vulnerable Children in Mount Lebanon and Baalbek through Retention Support Programs During 2019 and 2020 ADRA provided 845 boys and girls with educational support through Retention Support and Early Childhood Education yet gaps still exist in the areas of children education support discrimination against children with disabilities and adequate learning spaces. Children who are enrolled in school and are struggling to cope up with their schoolwork inadvertently leading to high dropout rates among students. The proposed intervention will address these gaps by providing and ensuring educational support for all Lebanese, Syrian refugees, and other migrant communities who are severely affected. Effective methods will be implemented through a Retention Support Program (RSP) to help students who are falling behind in school to catch up and encourage them to continue with their learning. Classes will focus on French/English, Math, Arabic, and Science and will be delivered in classrooms at ADRA’s learning centers, through two-hour sessions, five times a week. To ensure that children do not have to be out of school to attend RSP, ADRA will bring students during different shifts. Children who attend the afternoon shift at school will attend ADRA’s morning lessons. Those who go to school during the morning shift will then attend ADRA’s lessons in the afternoon. In addition, at least one community event will be organized each month by the Inclusion Officer and the Outreach Officers and at some times by local NGO Himaya. ADRA will conduct RSP for 330 girls and boys ages 6 to 14 years old out of which 20% of them will be Children with Disabilities (CWD). Geographic targets include 165 children in Mt. Lebanon and 165 children from Baalbek. As ADRA is currently providing RSP to 92 boys and girls, they will continue onto this proposed program in order to continue supporting them. To identify other children, ADRA will refer to its waiting list referrals from other organizations, community outreach, and household visits. ADRA’s Inclusion Officer will work with the Outreach Officers to identify CWDs and mentor the teaching facilitators on how to best include and teach the CWDs. To support families who live far from the centers and cannot afford transportation ADRA will provide transportation assistance to the beneficiaries who live far from the centers and cannot afford the costs, which will be at a maximum of $10 USD per child per month. This is estimated to be approximately 78% of the total beneficiaries. Classrooms at ADRA’s centers are child-friendly and protective learning spaces giving girls, boys, and caregivers a safe space. Targeted children will receive learning materials to improve the quality of education such as worksheets and stationery.  To ensure increased energy and ability to focus during learning, ADRA will collaborate with Lebanese NGO ShareQ to provide healthy and quality snacks to each child at the center, every day for 10 months. ShareQ has a  food security department named M Social Catering specialized in cooking and distributing food such as snacks, vacuum meals, and food boxes to vulnerable communities, schools, learning centers and, NGOs. The ShareQ team will manage, produce, distribute, and monitor food assistance for children. To provide psychosocial support (PSS) and protection to ADRA’s beneficiaries, PSS sessions will be tailored to students’ individual needs after an initial assessment with the students to identify the most pressing individual concerns. Parents will also be invited to participate in PSS sessions. To further enhance the program and prevent children from dropping out, approximately 400 caregivers and the surrounding community will attend regular awareness and training sessions to disseminate information about the prevention of violence against children, sexual and gender-based violence (S/GBV), disabilities, hygiene education, PSEA, PSS, early marriage, and child labor. 
ADRA has and will commit to abiding by the Lebanese Labor Law when recruiting its staff.