In addition to providing social and health care to patients suffering from disabilities and to striving to ensure all that is necessary to ensure them a life of dignity, Anta Akhi hopes to popularize the worldview that prioritizes the essence of a human being over his appearance and to promote the principles of fraternity and cooperation in a barrier-free environment that rejects all the stigmas and misconceptions still surrounding disabilities and the disabled.

Conditions and Limitations

Being a complementary association to SESOBEL, the Social Service for the Welfare of Disabled Children concerned with caring for disabled children under the age of 18, Anta Akhi welcomes the special cases referred from SESOBEL – 18 year olds and above whose parents are diseased or too old to care for them – and can accommodate 60 persons.

The patients transferred to be cared for by Anta Akhi fall into four categories:

• Patients with permanent resident status for whom Anta Akhi becomes a second family
• Patients who visit the center within the framework of a day program from Monday to Friday, in order to get accustomed to live with one another and to give their families time to rest and recharge.
• Patients who are still under the SESOBEL service but who drop by the center during the weekdays or at the weekend to socialize and build friendships.
• Patients who benefit from Anta Akhi’s care under urgent circumstances such as illness, death, family difficulties, etc.

Bearing in mind the importance of family bonding and the need for the disabled to live for the longest period possible in a normal family context, maintaining contact between the disabled and their families is a prerequisite for Anta Akhi to accept taking in patients. However, if a family were incapable of providing for their disabled child, they should invite him to spend the weekend at home once or twice a month at least. If this were not possible, the family should show up at the Anta Akhi center twice a month to spend time with their child.

Those granted permanent resident status at Anta Akhi are also expected to abide by certain rules and conditions or expose themselves to the risk of dismissal from the facility. Highest among these conditions are: the respect for the life of the community, the pursuit of a life of happiness and hope despite all the difficulties, positivity and openness to self improvement and development, compliance with the daily program in terms of punctuality and attendance and good conduct and respect both for authority and all care providers.

Programs

Apart from its various cultural, educational and social programs and its determination to engage the disabled in the decision making process, what most distinguishes Anta Akhi is its existential training program, which rests on the concept of humanizing humans, i.e. allowing healthy persons to acknowledge and understand the value of their lives through the difficulties crippling the lives of the disabled. School and university students in Lebanon and abroad enroll in this program in which around 3000 members take part on an annual basis.

In the future, Anta Akhi aspires to expand its premises or to construct another building to be able to grow its capacity and accommodate the largest possible number of patients.

Challenges

Caring for the disabled and for people with special needs is a Herculean task that no association, however resourceful, can handle on its own. The job requires massive support from the state and the relevant authorities and this is why the challenges facing Anta Akhi revolve mostly around funding. The association survives on cash and in-kind donations from friends and advocates but still suffers from deficits in its budget. There are around 70 full-timers and 11 part-timers to remunerate every month let alone overhead expenses and the cost of heating and transportation.

Another challenge is to find the human resource cadre that would accept and be suited to shoulder such a responsibility amidst the new generation’s reluctance to take up the job.