Session #1: Social Entrepreneurship for Lebanon 2021

Thursday, December 10, 2020 1:00 pm till 2:00 pm · Zoom Webinar

About The Meetup

Through this series you will connect with international experts and entrepreneurs at the forefront of creating profitable models to address MENA and the world most pressing social and humanitarian challenges.

Lebanon at the end of 2020 has been through a perfect storm of revolution, currency devaluation, Covid19 pandemic, and a surge in unemployment, inflation, and poverty numbers. While the change of the political leadership has been long overdue, the efforts to save the country and the society remains on the shoulders of civil society and bold social entrepreneurs.

Join us on this new Berytech Meetups session to hear from leading social entrepreneurs and experts about the role they’ve been playing in empowering Lebanese individuals and families to address the looming challenges of 2021.

In this session, you will also learn about what it takes to launch your innovative business and achieve the social impact throughout Lebanon and the MENA region.

Meet The Speakers

PANELIST

Georges Bitar

Founder – Live Love Recycle

Georges Bitar is a social entrepreneur from Lebanon who founded Live Love Recycle in July 2015, as a reaction to the huge waste crisis the country was facing at that time. As Georges and his colleagues could not find any way to properly dispose their recyclables, the idea of an app that would facilitate this process was born. By using the app, citizens can request a pick up for their recyclables at their convenience. After a challenging time in search of funds for implementing Liveloverecycle the project kicked off in 2018.
The app is currently serving more than 20.000 Beirutis and saved more than 3000 tons of waste from polluting the landfills and Mediterranean Sea. Live Love Recycle got plenty of media coverage and won several awards across the world, which allowed Georges’ team to travel the world, realizing that many countries are facing the same issues. In fact, more than 3.000.000.000 persons do not have access to a waste collection service and more than 90% of the plastic in the world is not being recycled.
This is why Georges and his team decided to take Live Love Recycle to another level, working on a new app that will allow to tackle this global issue. The Live Love Recycle App 2.0 will be the first crowdsourced recycling platforms. It will link all the stakeholders of the recycling process: the citizens, the collector, the recycling facility and the local authorities.

PANELIST

Loulya Halawani

Marketing Manager – FabricAid

An artist at heart, she graduated with a degree in Landscape Architecture and design. Studying how people move around, interact, and behave gave her an upper hand in determining trends and habits displayed by her consumer. It also gave her an eye for design when it comes to branding and execution.
She started off as a Communications Executive in the FMCG industry where she dealt with Advertising and Media agencies, overlooked multimedia branding, and analyzed retail studies.
In March 2020, she changed career paths and joined FabricAID as the new Marketing Manager. Her focus is to make this brand a household name and the go to partner when clothes donations are in place. From traditional marketing to the modern and digital, her strategy incorporated all different schools in order to cope with the fast-moving world we are a part of today.

PANELIST

Jay Joseph

Entrepreneurship and Peace Professor - AUB

Dr. Jay Joseph is a humanitarian-academic whose research focuses on Entrepreneurship, Poverty Reduction, and Peacebuilding. In 2018, Jay established the award-winning Business-in-Conflict Research Group, which hosts over 95 members and 30 affiliate researchers, and is leading the world on the role that entrepreneurship can play in reducing poverty and fostering peace in conflict and post-conflict settings. The group has won several recognitions including the 2020 AACSB Innovations that Inspire award, 2019 Best Paper at the ICSB World Conference, and whose work was included in the 75th UN General Assembly Report on Business and Human Rights. In addition to frequently publishing on the role of Entrepreneurship in conflict zones, Jay has raised over 191,000USD in funding for his work, and works extensively with several UN Agencies such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Iraq, and Lebanon) and the International Organization for Migration (Iraq), generating reports on how to improve business-based livelihood programs in the region. Jay serves as an advisor to several NGOs including Allisar (France) and Bring Hope Humanitarian Foundation (Sweden).

PANELIST

Jessica Ghaoui

Senior Business Development & Programs Officer - Berytech

Prior to joining Berytech, Jessica held the position of Business Project Manager at Ciel/GlobalSign from July 2014 to April 2015. Ciel is exclusively focused on Cyber Security, with the objective to improve the efficiency of electronic communications in a safe manner, in Lebanon and the region.
Jessica’s “can do” attitude and her communication skills were very much shaped as she worked as a Direct Sales Agent and project administration at Bank Med Brand Network and Retail Liability Product Division.
She moved to Berytech mid 2015 and started working as the incubation support and community manager in BDD1294, before moving to join the team of the new Impact Rise program, managed by Berytech and funded by the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Working with Berytech has greatly contributed to her experience in the field of startups and SME incubation and acceleration and has helped her analyze critical business requirements in different fields. Today she is working with a social impact purpose – help social ventures in their scale up phase in order to contribute to Lebanon’s social and economic growth.

Places are limited. Get your access ticket now.

About Berytech Meetups

Berytech Meetups is a program powered by the Global Innovation of Science and Technology network (GIST), initiated by the U.S. Department of State, aiming at building a strong and vibrant network of entrepreneurs in Lebanon focusing on science and technology.

This year, Berytech is organizing Meetups powered by GIST with a series tackling five (5) major issues for Lebanon and the MENA region: Food Security in the MENA Region, Social Entrepreneurship in Lebanon, Renewable Energy, Solid Waste Management, and Raising a Generation of Coders.

Need more info?

If you have any questions about Berytech’s Meetups Program, please email Ms. Maria Chahine at maria.chahine@berytech.org, and she will get back to you.