May 31, 2007
by Toya Richards Hill

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Barely into her 30s, Rima Babikian carries the life load of a woman twice her age.

More than one job, a husband who also works multiple hours, three children and a sickly mother-in-law who lives with the family make survival tough. Money is scarce and "there is always financial crisis," the young woman said.

Ongoing wars and conflicts, like the one last summer between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, keep an air of instability and uncertainty in place. "Yes, it's tough," Babikian said of her existence.

Even now in the northern part of the country, near Tripoli, Lebanese soldiers are at odds with militants at a Palestinian refugee camp, and bombs have reportedly gone off in Beirut in the last two weeks.

Yet in Babikian's densely populated, Lebanese-Armenian community in east Beirut, she's not much different than the rest of her neighbors. She, like many of the others, needs help. And she looks to Jinishian Memorial Program (JMP) for a reasonable portion of that relief.

One day recently, inside the small grouping of buildings that makes up the JMP at the end of Arax Street in the city's Bourj Hammoud suburb, Babikian waited patiently to receive medicine from the dispensary.

She said her family would be in severe debt without JMP, where she gets needed medicines, and where her mother-in-law also gets drugs for diabetes and other chronic illnesses.

Others sat patiently there too, waiting their turn at the pharmacy or to see a social worker.

"In Lebanon, most of the people do not have medical or social security coverage," said Seta Pamboukian, country director of the Jinishian Memorial Program [online at http://www.pcusa.org/jinishian/index.htm] in Lebanon. Also as younger residents leave the war-torn nation, many of the older generation are left behind without care, she said.

JMP is in the heart of the community here, "near to the people who need us most," she said.

A relief and development agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), JMP exists to aid thousands of poor and needy Armenians who live outside the United States, especially the most socially vulnerable like children and the elderly.

Created in the mid 1960s from the estate of Presbyterian Vartan H. Jinishian, an Armenian-American businessman, the program is involved in community-based development and the delivery of social services and relief projects in five countries, including Armenia, Lebanon and Syria.

Some 150,000 Armenians – many the descendants of those who fled the oppressive Ottoman Empire more than a century ago – make their homes in Lebanon. Today Lebanese-Armenians are guaranteed seats in the Lebanese parliament.

"We are here for all Armenians in Lebanon. Whoever has a problem can come and apply," Pamboukian said.

Included among JMP's services is a childcare program, which it has operated for a number of years. Little ones as young as a year old get care that includes a hot meal and snacks, exercise in an open-air playground and developmental activities.

When school is not in session, siblings up to age 11 also can receive care.

Then there's JMP's social services area, where social workers see 16 to 22 cases a day, Pamboukian said. It handles a variety of issues, even making burial arrangements for elderly people who have no family, she said.

Most recently, JMP's focus has been on a community-based developmental approach to care and assistance. That means, for example, when folks like Babikian need help through the medication dispensary program, it's done in coordination with social services, Pamboukian said.

Clients are interviewed to ensure the medications are being taken and properly, and to see that things are all right in the home, she said. "It's not just dispensing the medicine; there is another type of follow-up."

Community input is key too, and Pamboukian lifted up as proof a volunteer group made up of women with different chronic illnesses who've been empowered to plan their own course of action.

The group decided what it wanted to do and what issues it wanted to address, including stress, recreation and how to take medicines, she said.

"They had a plan," Pamboukian said. "They chose topics that they wanted to learn more about."

Increasing the focus on community-based development has been part of a five-year plan for JMP that began in 2003, and has been bolstered by the 2005 registration of JMP as a local non-governmental organization (NGO), she said.

Without registration as a local NGO, JMP had to work unofficially in the country, partnering with other local agencies in order to serve the Lebanese-Armenian population.

Now, "we are facing lots of new things to do," Pamboukian said.

A walk along the narrow streets surrounding JMP's offices reveals why those "new things" are so essential.

There's the corner market vendor, trying earnestly to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to neighbors looking to feed their families.

And there are the community's skilled hand-craftsmen, visible through shop windows, hard at work trying to eek out simple livings.

Economically, many Lebanese-Armenians suffer, as does much of the larger Lebanese population.

In the months following last summer's Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, unemployment in Lebanon jumped from 14 percent to 20 percent, according to Lebanon's English language newspaper The Daily Star.

And, according to a first-quarter 2007 report from the World Bank, Lebanon's overall economy declined by 5 percent in 2006 instead of growing by 6 percent as had been projected.

"The worst thing is that people do not have hope," Pamboukian said. "We are trying to introduce a change to make the community more aware, to make them more connected."

Presbyterian News Service