Background In recent years, significant efforts have been made to revitalise Lebanon’s damaged environment. While infrastructure projects are underway, a void still exists in the country’s level of social awareness with regards to environmental issues. In agreement with the national environment strategy, the Ministry of Environment (MoE) has designated an awareness unit to address this matter. However, the lack of human and financial resources prevents the unit from functioning properly. In order to comply with a national decree calling for increased national awareness of environmental issues, Lebanon has to significantly improve the capabilities of this unit. Objectives The project’s overall objective is to assist the MoE in establishing a permanent and pro-active awareness unit capable of identifying, evaluating, promoting, and assisting in various environmental concerns. The project’s specific objectives are to: - Conduct a large number of activities involving environmental clubs, associations, municipalities, and schools; - Fulfil environmental awareness within other projects; - Train, monitor, and rate NGO activities; - Prepare environmental project proposals for funding; - Work with local media to address environmental issues; - Provide technical assistance to appropriate parties; - Develop an updated website to be used as a forum for change between the MoE and the public; and - Create and distribute educational manuals, videos, posters, and other material. Results The overall aim of the project was to enhance the awareness unit at the Ministry of Environment so as to enable it to identify, evaluate, promote and assist in highlighting various environmental concerns at all levels. The following results were achieved by the project: - Development of an environmental awareness strategy and policy reports, a draft decree for recognizing environmental NGOs, a guidance manual on the awareness tools that can be used in the implementation of different awareness campaigns, Terms of Reference (TORs) for five proposed new staff of the awareness unit at the MoE, one additional staff member hired during the course of the project and three further staff hired 16 months following the end of the project, a mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of awareness campaigns, a coordination mechanism with donors for fund raising of awareness campaigns and capacity building, various proposals for training of municipalities on awareness raising issues, implementation of a greening workshop with the private sector and a training kit for the Ministry of Social Affairs was developed and implemented; - Updating the list of NGOs which has been published on the MoE website, including a fact sheet on NGOs field of expertise, training course for 24 NGOs covering project's planning, management and fund raising, guidance manual for NGOs on the requirements and procedures for establishing and running NGOs, as well as guidelines for administrative and financial management. - Promotion of several environmental events through media coverage, a strategy and mechanism for using media for awareness campaigns was developed, six TV spots were prepared and disseminated through local TV stations, a survey on awareness dissemination through different media outlet, a digitalized database on environmental articles was prepared and assistance was provided to the IT department of the MoE for the development of the new layout of the MoE website.