The town of Amioun in North Lebanon is home to around 15,000 Lebanese residents and 1,000 refugees. In 2019, in an effort to solve the solid waste crisis faced by Amioun and surrounding villages, the municipality established the Amioun Municipal Recovery Facility (AMRF), which is being supported by USAID’s Community Support Program (CSP) via its design of a sustainable recyclables waste management model that will increase the number of recyclables processed while lowering the cost of waste management on surrounding municipalities and residents. To support this intervention, CSP is equally providing technical assistance to 19 surrounding villages to design and implement a community awareness campaign on recycling concepts and sorting at source.

On October 21, 22 and 28, 2022, CSP conducted a training workshop for the first group, which was attended by 18 community members from six villages, and included a site visit to AMRF. Following this, participants will develop customized public awareness and communication plans to be implemented in each of the targeted communities. In parallel, CSP is distributing bins while also improving the institutional and operational capacities of AMRF.

“The training material exceeded my expectations and I really enjoyed being part of these workshops. We are now looking forward to developing and implementing the awareness plan,” said Simon Nasr, a volunteer from Qalhat village.