In 1984 the father of Shadi Sabah was martyred, and the child was orphaned at the age of four and deprived of the warmth of his father and of the tenderness of his mother, who was forced to remain in the western Bekaa. But Shadi soon found before him «Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association», which adopted him and embraced him at one of its mabarrats: «Imam Al-Khoei».
Here the child Shadi Sabah learned, grew up and graduated from the university stage thanks to the association's care, and today he holds the post of head of the «schools department at the compensation fund for members of the teaching body» in the private schools. Today Shadi is 34 years old; he is married and has two children. He did not feel «orphanhood for a single moment; rather the association's founder, the late Allama Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, was always the spiritual father to me». Shadi is one among thousands of orphans who entered the association as children and graduated from it as young people able to build a future and a family. For the fifth year running, «Al-Mabarrat» is marking the coming of the month of Ramadan in the shadow of the absence of its late founder, under the title «Together we complete the journey of goodness and love». In cooperation with the Ministry of Telecommunications, the association launched a donation campaign by sending one dollar to the number 1107. The director of the media department at the association, Farouk, says that «Al-Mabarrat's institutions are a model for preserving the human being's dignity, educating him, giving him culture and taking him by the hand towards the future; and they have translated Sayyed Fadlallah's aspirations by developing their structural foundations so as to become more closely linked to the aims for which they were set up». Rizk points out that «the association has established specialized councils whose task is to focus on coordinating efforts and vision, developing the systems and regulations, strengthening the complementarity among the association's fields of work, and linking the aims, projects and programmes so as to achieve the great developmental project».
Rizk enumerates the most prominent accomplishments the association has carried out during its humanitarian journey, pointing to «the educational inclusion through which Al-Mabarrat has sought to affirm the concept of welcome», noting that it «today embraces 840 included pupils with learning difficulties in its academic and vocational institutions»
