In 2008, Zonta Club of Hilo adopted a school in Sawfar, Lebanon.  Zonta Club of Hilo member Phyllis Ahmadia, whose family has relatives in Lebanon, organized the Project and personally delivered the books, pencils, pens, rulers and other school supplies to the children. 

Rural Sawfar is in the Mt. Druze area of Lebanon. This school is a few hundred yards from a site of severe bombing in 2006 and most of these children have known nothing but fear and insecurity since then. Children of Sawfar Official Public School are of mixed religious and political persuasion and know little of why their small, peaceful community is so strategically important. They have no direct link to the outside world to obtain the information they need to learn.

At the time of our Zonta project, there were few textbooks and no internet access for teachers. Classrooms were generally bare except for benches and desks. The students did not have a library and most do not have the luxury of having non-classroom books to read. The need to heat the school to a minimum level (the children wear coats in class during winter) uses up the small school budget.

The students who attend this public school do so because their parents cannot afford to send them to the better-equipped private schools. Students take English and science and math are taught in English.