AUB is in the process of establishing a university-based organization that works to develop and aid the Lebanese community. This organization is currently dubbed the “Task Force for Reconstruction and Community Service”.

The project is still in its first stages: A website is being created and a draft report with the aim of providing a summary of what has been achieved so far as well as to define then solicit a vision to the community is currently underway.

The July war made the nation plead for aid and relief. Students and faculty responded with altruistic zeal, offering their expertise and support to any and all organizations working towards the effort to keep Lebanon and its people on their feet.

As the war raged on, AUB came to an understanding: the full potential of the AUB faculty and students could be better realized if there was an organized effort to work as a team rather than as dispersed individuals.

AUB’s efforts swelled and “at the end of the aggression, many community and faculty members were enthusiastic about continuing with the endeavor. They decided to draw up a vision and systematically promote this creed to relieve human suffering and aid the community,” said Makram Rabah, Vice President of the USFC and Student Representative in the burgeoning Task Force.

President John Waterbury assembled a group of the faculty members that had been working towards the relief effort during the war to take on this project. Ghassan Hamadeh from Family Medicine was deemed Chair of the Task Force and Imad Baalbaki from Development/Fund Raising: Secretary.

The list of faculty members included Sharif Abdunnur (Fine Arts and Art History), Nour Alayyan (Nursing), Tamer Amin (Education), Thurraya Arayssi (Internal Medicine), Mona Harb (Architecture/Planning), Brigitte Khoury (Psychiatry), Ibrahim Khoury (Information/Public Relations) Mounir Mabsout (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Fadl Moukalled (Associate Dean), Iman Nuwayhid (Environmental Health), Salma Talhouk (Plant Sciences), and Rami Zurayk (Land and Water Resources).

According to Rabah, “the task force is in the process of adopting ongoing activities. They are in the range of providing advisory roles. For example, Engineering students could present advice for landscape design, Medical Students could provide aid in their field, and plays with the aim of raising funds for charity could be produced, and so on.”

Rabah said that all people are encouraged to help out. “Membership is loose. You don’t have to be a chairman or anything to get involved. Anyone who is already active in the community service area or who wishes to be is invited.” He said that whether or not people outside of AUB are to be involved in the efforts was never discussed, but they are always welcome.

Rabah’s role in the task force is, he said, “to encourage the students of AUB to actively take part in any and all activities related to construction and development.” Pinpointing the importance of his statement, he said “We are young people and we have a sacred obligation to help out. We,as AUBites, have even more of an obligation.”

Hamadeh underlined the fact that the “students are the trick in all of this. The students are the heart of what can make this work. If they don’t take the initiative through clubs and their own individual efforts, this cannot and will not work. Faculty members are smaller in number and have a number of obstacles preventing them from taking on the project alone. They have time restraints due to teaching loads as well as a number of other distracting factors. Of course some faculty members have more freedom and support but not all will be able to take such an active role. If the students don’t pick up the ball of this task and ensure its movement in the right direction, it will not work.”