BEIRUT — A group of teenage girls walks around Al Marj refugee camp in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley while everybody looks at them strangely as they continue their way to the field. Aya carries balls while Rahaf is in charge of the bat; Nariman is responsible for the stumps. The residents of the camp, just 9 kilometers (5 miles) from the Syrian border, are not accustomed to seeing these kinds of items. But the players don’t seem to care. They rush because it’s time for their cricket practice.

Rahaf, Nariman and Aya are some of the almost 600 teenagers that participate in the Alsama Cricket Club. This sport, which originated in England, was not very common in Lebanon until two and a half years ago when this NGO started training around 100 Syrian children and teenagers in the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. Now they have 10 cricket hubs around the country with almost 50 players each.

Elham al-Hassan practices cricket, but the 30-year-old from Homs also trains the teenage girls. “Cricket brought a lot of good things to the camp; now these kids have a goal and something to aim for in the future,” Hassan told Al-Monitor. In Lebanon, there are around 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Most of them live in informal settlements in the Bekaa Valley. Only the Anti-Lebanon Mountains separate them from their native Syria.

The economic crash that has been strangling the Lebanese people for two years now has hit this already-vulnerable community harder. Alongside the critical socioeconomic context, teenagers and especially teenage girls are one of the most forgotten groups in humanitarian aid. “We saw that persevering in getting the girls to keep playing cricket made them more committed to learning and studying,” explained Meike Ziervogel, CEO of the Alsama Project.