Project awarded $10,000 Grant from NC Humanities Council

Khayrallah Program’s Lebanese in North Carolina Project Wins $10,000:  Award granted by North Carolina Humanities Council

RALEIGH, N.C—The Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies at North Carolina State University was awarded $10,000 by the North Carolina Humanities Council for the 2012 cycle. This award is to help fund The Lebanese in North Carolina Project, a 3-year old effort to research, preserve and publicize the history of the Lebanese-Arab community in North Carolina from 1880 through today. The Project will be using the grant monies to partially fund the museum exhibition set to unveil at the North Carolina Museum of History in 2014. Incorporating video games, interactive touch-screens, family heirlooms and recordings of oral histories, the Project will also be featuring educational programming at the Museum to teach all visitors about the contributions of the Lebanese in North Carolina. The museum exhibition is one of four cultural goals of the Project. In March 2012, the Project released a full-length documentary, Cedars in the Pines that included oral testimonies and family photographs of first, second, third and fourth generation Lebanese. Since then, the documentary has been traveling to universities, museums and libraries throughout the state as part of their educational plan. The Project also launched a website and online archive to feature the collections of Lebanese families and to make available primary research on the history. The Project is also working on grade school curriculum that will be integrated into K-12 classrooms in WakeCounty in the coming year.

To learn more about the Lebanese in North Carolina Project, visit the website, the blog, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The North Carolina Humanities Council is a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Humanities Council supports through grants and public programs vital conversations that nurture the cultures and heritage of North Carolina. Learn more about the work of the North Carolina Humanities Council.