NEF (Near East Foundation) -- 2007 Annual Report -- Country Report; Lebanon

Summer 2006 news headlines took me back to the past--a dark, gloomy and depressing past that I had lived and survived: a 20 year Lebanese civil war, the 1982 full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon...1996...2000...and on and on....

However, this time it was different this time because I was watching it on television, away from my family and friends. This time I was not staying in a shelter hearing the bombs outside and not knowing when one would strike our house. This time, I was outside the country, watching live coverage on the news and seeing photographs of people, injured or dead, displaced or in shelters. They could be someone I knew well...innocent souls caught in the middle of madness...

I felt powerless, useless, unable to share the pain as I did for years, unable to alleviate their suffering. But this time, I also was part of the NEF (Near East Foundation) team and for the first time in my career with NEF, I counted myself as a relief worker responding to a crisis AND a Lebanese national working to alleviate the suffering of the families and children of my own country. This time I was not working for Iraq, Darfur or the West Bank.

NEF responded to the humanitarian crisis, helping thousands of displaced families, particularly children, the elderly, and women who fled their homes and the bombing, taking shelter in schools and parks or were trapped at home without electricity, running water and the basics for survival. NEF's priorities were food, water, sleeping bags, first aid and hygiene kits, medicines, medical check-ups, psycho-social help for children, even harvesting crops in the dangerous Bekaa Valley to be distributed to the displaced.

I served as NEF's Relief Mission Coordinator for Lebanon and, from the onset of the crisis, NEF worked with a local assessment team to evaluate the health and humanitarian situation on the ground to assure the accuracy of our efforts. The team met with local leaders and, as access permitted, conducted visits across the country to centers overcrowded with internally displaced people. We partnered with seven local nongovernmental organizations well located in the most hard hit areas to provide immediate logistics and outreach, including such badly affected places as southern Nabatiyeh and Sidon.

CEASEFIRE

Lebanon was torn apart by the summer's war and left with an unemployment rate of over 40 percent. I returned months later when NEF resumed intensive training workshops in micro-credit, particularly aimed at helping young entrepreneurs get a fresh start (or restart) during this critical post-war period. Building on over 10 years of successful experience in community-based credit in Lebanon, NEF-Jordan credit specialists arrived to conduct the training. They were assisted by guest counselors from five Lebanese credit funds previously developed by NEF and its partners.

These credit fund managers, with more than a decade on the job, had many lessons to share with representatives of dozens of new, local, nongovernmental organizations in attendance. They were health care and social workers, educators and researchers, disabled people--all with one to 10 years of professional experience who came together to learn how to design/manage/strengthen community-based credit funds supporting productive, diverse, household enterprises.

I have seen NEF's loans of $200 to $3,000 change many people's lives for the better, providing income and security. For people in need, they can make a big difference and be a valuable asset on the path towards self-help and greater self worth. With credit, poor families can capitalize on investment opportunities and initiate new, diverse, income-generating activities or expand existing ones. Home industries, for example, often require few new skills beyond those already available within the household. In addition to bringing a sense of achievement, the repaid funds become available to help someone else in their communities.

Over the past 10 years, NEF has granted more than one thousand loans with a total value of about $750,000, generated from less than $80,000 in seed money. These funds are now run independently by five local nongovernmental organizations serving the entire country. The success of these credit funds in creating small business start-ups, as well as the high rate of loan repayment, clearly demonstrates that this is a viable strategy for investment in community development, worthy of expansion.

Actually, NEF has known this for a long time. We were one of the first American organization's providing micro-credit services to the poor, starting in Macedonia in the 1920s. Besides Lebanon, NEF and its partners currently are engaged in community-based credit programs and technical assistance for micro-finance institutions in Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, and Mali.