At a time when Lebanon's population continues to endure the impact of numerous challenges, it is essential to support our social enterprises by opening new demand channels, markets and partnerships. Last October, we led a market exploration study mission to Paris, France with four of our outstanding social enterprises from Lebanon: Inaash, L’Artisan du Liban, Creative Space Beirut and FabricAID.

With the support of l’Institut Francais and a private donor, our portfolio of social enterprises had the opportunity to meet with dedicated and committed business owners to explore sales collaborations, share business strategies, explore co-facilitating workshops on shared experiences and much more. Each meeting provided our social entrepreneurs with insight on how to enrich their organisations both inwards and with the French market.

We have found that in addition to providing strategic funding, transformative management support and data analytics to social enterprises, partners and donors can play a critical role in alleviating poverty and unemployment by supporting more such market exploration study missions. By helping social enterprises grow demand for their goods and services, we can help them sustain and create new jobs for vulnerable communities. This is particularly true for the fashion and design sector in Lebanon, which has limited growth potential inside Lebanon, but typically performs well in foreign markets.

To take a closer look at who our social entrepreneurs met with, the events they attended and the results to date check out our blog!

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