Barbara Lubin is a lifelong peace, justice and disability rights activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), a non-profit organization which since 1988, has been working for the rights and the well being of children in the Middle East. MECA sends shipments of aid to Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, and supports projects - from clean drinking water and medicines to playgrounds and cultural programs - that make life better for the children through humanitarian aid to children's clinics, hospitals, schools and women's organizations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Iraq.
For her efforts on behalf of these children, the Union of Palestinian Women's Associations in North America honored her with a special award in 1990. In 2000, the American Muslims of America presented Lubin
with the Service to Humanity Award at their 51st annual conference. The
award cited her as a "unique individual with an inextinguishable love
for fellow beings, children in particular, and for capacity to
transcend religious boundaries."
Lubin has led some 20 fact-finding delegations to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, Iraq and Lebanon, bringing hundreds of people from the United States to the Middle East to learn first-hand about the realities there and the brutal impact of US foreign policy on the lives of Palestinian children and their families.
She has lectured on the issue of Middle East politics and the plight of
the children in the region to dozens of schools, universities,
conferences, religious institutions and community groups. With slides and stories, she brings her eyewitness accounts of the Israeli occupation and the situation in the Middle East to U.S. audiences, mobilizing people to work for peace with justice. She works tirelessly to educate the U.S. people about both the impact of Washington's military and political policies on the Iraqi and Palestinian people.
Lubin, a mother of four grown children including a son with Down's Syndrome, has also been at the forefront of the struggle for equal access to education for disabled children. As a children's advocate in the early 1970s, she filed lawsuits against school districts to provide free appropriate education for disabled children. Later she served on the city of Berkeley School Board. She also founded and directed Project PLAE, a summer program that brought together both disabled and able-bodied children in barrier-free environments where they could learn to play and work together.
