The green area highlighted on the map below is our park, and indicates the proximity of our neighbourhood to the blast zone, only 1 mile away.

(SEE OUR PROGRESS IN THE UPDATES BELOW)

Beirut has had a tumultous year, from the October Revolution in 2019 against corruption, to an economic collapse and then the arrival of Covid 19, and now the city has been rocked by a catastrophic explosion leaving thousands of homes uninhabitable and over 300,000 residents without shelter. The two videos above were sent to us by our neighbours and participants in the park project. The park which they created in their community is now the only sanctuary in a place where destruction has been total and unprejudiced.

Three months ago, a small group of friends began an initiative to create more green spaces and public parks in their local community called GROBeirut. What began as four people cleaning up rubbish and pulling out weeds from abandoned lots grew in just 5 weeks into a local guerrilla gardening movement with over 50 members, known as GROBeirut. Located in a small community in the Achrafieh neighbourhood of Beirut, our volunteers are now reorientating their focus towards providing immediate and urgent relief to our community which has been devastated by the port explosion, being located only 1 mile from the blast's epicentre.

We have three principle goals:

FOOD - We will use our now established park as a distribution point for food, medicine and sanitary products. Local houses are being volunteered and cleaned to serve as storage facilities and kitchens, and residents are pulling together to help one another. Over 75% of Lebanon's food came through the port, which is now unusable. Prices for everday goods had already tripled as of a week ago, and now scarcity of essentials is a real prospect for many families. Operating a large open space where people can gather safely and eat, take a break and sit is now vital.

REPAIR - We will use our contacts and relationships in the neighbourhood to get carpenters, welders and drivers prepared to clean damaged homes, and reinstall doors and windows to make homes habitable, and crucially provide a sense of safety in an increasingly unstable environment. We will also work to preserve the buildings of old Beirut the roofs of which were blown away by the explosion, by covering them in tarpaulin before winter so they are not lost permanently.

MORALE - Our efforts focus around uniting people in a public space that was built by them, and now it is to ensure that the rebuilding of the community is undertaken with the same unity and togetherness with which our park was built. We are not faceless people in uniform handing out brown boxes, but neighbours and friends working together to rebuild the community .

We don’t want people to feel left behind and abandoned by the international community. We want an immediate presence and impact on the ground, to show that Beirut is not alone in its most difficult time since the war.

We are therefore looking for donations in order to help one of the worst affected residential areas in the city. All funds raised will go directly into purchasing foodstuffs, basic amenities, and equipment for people to rebuild their communities.

Please contact us via email for details on how you can be more involved, or if you want to travel to Beirut yourself to assist - team@grobeirut.com

You can follow our progress on instagram: @grobeirut. and visit our website for more details: https://www.grobeirut.com/

Thank you very much for your support