SMEs in Lebanon constitute around 90% the population in the country, hence the key for any hope in restoring the Lebanese economy is through supporting its young entrepreneurs and their driving force. Consequently, Make Your Mark (MYM) in collaboration with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) seeked to support enterprises and freelancers, namely those who were affected from the Beirut port blast in Biel, Saifi, Karantina, Mar-Mikhael and Gemmayze area, in terms of two components: first, in terms of logistical support and second in terms of technical guidance post-crisis.
The project aimed to provide guidance to the SMEs to move forward with their businesses and take the right decision to ensure the sustainability and resilience of their work and to deal with post crisis situations in order to salvage their businesses.
MYM and KAS organized a webinar of 4 sessions. The first session took place on 19.10.2020 by Mr. Tony Samia on “Business Plan: Re-evaluation of business goals, the methods on how these goals can be attained and the time frame within which these goals need to be achieved”. The second session was on “Post-crisis Management: Hedging against currency and raw material risk” by Mr. Jean Tawileh. The third session was done by Mr. Nicolas Boukhater on “Entrepreneurship in a Family Business: How to face winds of change”. The last session “Wise Business Decisions for Startups in Lebanon Amid the Economic and Pandemic Crisis” by Mrs. Jennifer Mansour.
The second phase of the project will be to equip and prepare 2 offices to host up to 60 entrepreneurs and freelancers.