While NGOs have fled refugee camps because of the coronavirus, one Christian charity has moved in to take up the slack.

Dublin priest, Fr William Stuart, helps provide schooling to children of Syrian refuges in the city of Tyre, Lebanon, but he has had to refocus on providing basic food aid as NGOs have abandoned their posts.

The school building he used to use has been closed down so he delivers worksheets directly to children in the refugee camps. His group have also been distributing food aid, and helping families plant gardens beside their tents in the camps.

“The situation is critical, all NGOs are gone. People are starving,” Fr William Stuart has told parishioners in Dalkey, Co Dublin, where he had previously served.

“All the NGOs have gone to ground and are ‘working from home’ with the result that refugees are receiving no aid,” he wrote in a stark message.

He told the Irish Times his group view themselves as frontline people “who don’t have the luxury of ‘working from home’ nor can we abandon the most vulnerable in this most difficult of times. To my disappointment this view is not shared by the NGO sector who have wholescale abandoned ship.”

The most urgent need among the refugees was for food, he said. “With no sign of aid agencies and the body politic only helping the Lebanese, things are not good.”