Levantine Heritage Foundation Support Options

Existing web data

This website has been built up over many years by people who have provided their time and energy to help preserve this slice of multi-cultural history. We are very grateful for this work. The website comprises of over 1,400 pages, over 270 pdf files, over 10,000 images arranged with our currently newly launched menu system (5 streams leading to 5 landing pages each) with links to other resources. They are intended to provide background information and precise information through databases to help researchers both for family history and the overall Levantine Heritage. We welcome suggestions for further external links and we are grateful for all past submissions and future work from friends. Our aim is to increase the body of easily accessible data to inspire future generation to carry on our mission to research, preserve and disseminate their findings about every aspect of the history and culture of the Levant.

Options for collaborations

We show clearly what data comes from which source, whether they be a descendant of Levantines or academic researchers. These people can be contacted, either through their e-mails visible on the website, or through us (subject to them agreeing to this connection). The exchange of ideas and information hopefully will assist both sides. We also are happy to pass messages to researchers with suggestions of collaborative work or to publicise your ongoing research or the outline of your suggested group research to elicit volunteers.

Options for financial assistance

Levantine Heritage Foundation is a charitable organisation with a modest revenue through membership subscriptions. All Trustees work on a volunteer basis, entirely unpaid. Our funds need to be dispensed in a way both to satisfy the aims laid out in our constitution and the Charity Commission and those who support us through subscriptions and donations. Assisting researchers with funds is possible, once certain criteria are met and subject to us having the funds to dispense in that financial year.

LHF is happy to receive applications for funding of research by both academics connected with LHF through its past activities and the wider body of academia and private research. What we are not able to do is to provide financial assistance to family researchers unless that research has been broadened to include multiple families and trade networks and is thus of benefit to the wider LHF body. In your application for funding you need to demonstrate that the research is relevant to our field, the work is unique and not published elsewhere, you provide a time table with aims clearly laid out and the resulting text will be published on our website. We will not claim exclusive rights to this research and the authors are free to have it published elsewhere or to use it for their own purposes.

Options for volunteering

If you are based in or travel frequently to the countries we label as the Levant, volunteering options increase. This could involve photographing buildings (especially those at risk), cemeteries etc. Interviewing people in the region who have knowledge or recollections of interest, checking archives in those countries on behalf of specific requests. If you have language skills, translating documents would also be a valuable service. In addition there exist some archives from various estates that promise unique data. It would usually involve a considerable amount of time to assess and record documents and books that are sometimes in a vulnerable condition.

We will fit in with your interests and accessibility to materials, whether these are from family or in archives in your part of the world. There is much we would love to access, and here your knowledge of what materials do survive in your region would be a key for a potential partnership for their reproduction / transcription / scanning or whatever it takes to secure their long-term future.

Finally there are some photographic archives in different parts of the world, whose owners recognise their intrinsic value, but do not have the knowledge and equipment to scan these. Here your location and degree of proximity would be crucial in helping to preserve this aspect of Levantine heritage. Applications for travel expenses would be considered.