Social Centre Saint Sauveur

The center was S. Sauveur, belonging to the Basilian Salvatorian, is located on the tip of a plain beside which the valley is dominated by olive trees, pines, rocks, and scattered groups of houses are often abandoned or destroyed. The center is located about 6 km east of Joun, a village among the olive groves above the Nahr al-Awali River. Joun is located about fifteen miles north-east of Sidon (Saida in Arabic). The port city of Sidon, located 40 km south of Beirut, is surrounded by citrus and banana trees. Founded at least 6000 years ago, was a Phoenician city rich and important.
The community center is St. Sauveur in the old school practice of the Monastery of the Holy Saviour, which housed the minor seminary, still united in a single area. The monastery of religious belief of the Greek Melkite Catholics, was built in the eighteenth century (1711). This monastery has been the victim of a dozen wars since its foundation until today. Wars that have not reserved, either, religious. About forty men were massacred.
Lately, in 1956, the monastery was damaged by an earthquake. It was then rebuilt with the school and its reception center.
 Back in 1985 the monastery was damaged. In fact, since 1983, when Israel withdrew from the area, some Muslim and Druze militias, began a series of looting and destruction of razing the Christian villages of the area forcing many communities to flee to the north, near Beirut. Since then, many homes were not even rebuilt while others are occupied by the same Druze and Muslims, still in the area. This conflict has made it even more difficult and dramatic survival of many families, whose effects are still visible. The year 1985 was the year of the total devastation of the area. The Christians were all refugees after the terrible massacres. The Convent of St. Sauveur was abandoned by the religious and became a military zone. The building that houses the shelter and the school, was not spared, but then ransacked and robbed of all their precious belongings: books, paintings and furniture ... We talked about those moments in the cantons of religious and demographic change
 In 1990, the policy has changed. It talks about the return of refugees and end the civil war. To encourage people to return to their lands, it should go before them and reconstruct them. Thus, the monastery has been restored according to the possibilities. The school was reopened with the minor seminary and became also a center for technical training, then regular school, then became a reception center.
In essence, the dramatic economic and social conditions of families living in the area are the result not only of poverty and the state of absolute degradation (lack of livelihood and the shortage of school education) that involves the local community as a whole, but are also the result of the latest and last Israeli-Lebanese war of 2006. Moreover, the apparent political impasse on Lebanon will pay for months now looking for an internal agreement to the parliament to elect a new president, thus braking the process of reforms necessary for economic and social development of the country, helping to maintain and worsen the already difficult socio-economic situation of the place.
Specifically, the center Saint Sauveur has today: a home, school, and takes care of the following types of children:
a) children who have difficult social circumstances living in the halfway house and study at the school.
b) children have-nots who live at home and which provides education in the school.
c) young seminarians (minor seminarians) who live in boarding school to study.
d) children in the area for which you do different activities in the center, and for which they are sometimes different distributed aid.
The needs of this center are many, both for the maintenance and repair of buildings from the 18th century and damaged many times, both for the crew, both for individual and collective needs of children, housing, schooling ...

Collège Saint Sauveur Joun, Chouf El, BP305 Saida - Liban
Tel - Fax: 07/975049, 07/975071, cell: 03/665012, e-mail: abdoraad@yahoo.com