Mar Elias Elementary School

Some Basic Facts and Information

The elementary school was founded in 1997 with two first grade classes. A grade a year was added with 2 or 3 classrooms for each grade.  By 2007 there were almost 700 students enrolled in the elementary school with between 30 and 40 students per class.

When the elementary school began, its classrooms were located temporarily in other buildings on the MEEI campus.  In September 2004 the new elementary school building opened, but the school has quickly outgrown even this space.  Already plans for adding more classrooms are being made. The first four floors of the elementary school building accommodate as many as 800 children in grades one to eight, and the 5th floor is being finished to add more classroom space.

Students in the elementary school come from many villages in a 30 mile radius of Ibillin. They come to school on big buses or their parents drive them in their cars. The students are Christians and Muslims.

They study, play, and work together in a safe environment where they learn to appreciate and respect each other and their different religious traditions.  The students are learning to live together in peace and to become peacemakers. In Ibillin at Mar Elias Elementary School they are building peace on the desktops of the children. They are trying to put into practice what Jesus taught in the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." Children around the world can also be peacemakers as they help the children in the Galilee region of Israel learn and live in peace. In a very real sense "peace can be built on the desktops of the children".

In 2006 the first class of eighth graders graduated from Mar Elias Elementary School  in a great celebration involving the entire community.  The school is truly a beacon of hope on the Mountain of Light.