This weekend, SPARK Lebanon was pleased to welcome members of parliament from the Democrats 66 (D66) party in The Netherlands. MP Alexander Hammelburg, the D66 spokesperson for foreign trade, development cooperation and defense, and MP Anne-Marijke Podt, a former aid worker who now serves as the D66 spokesperson for refugees and migration, joined SPARK and its partner organisations working on creating employment opportunities for youth, women and refugees in Lebanon. 

The worsening political and economic situation in Lebanon has led to many challenges for both Lebanese and the nearly 1.2 million refugees living in the country. To learn more about how these issues impact access to the labour market for young people, D66 met with Syrian and Lebanese entrepreneurs, young graduates working remotely within the tech sector, as well as several organisations that support youth with training in coding skills, entrepreneurship development and facilitating internships.

International payments
Since 2019, Lebanon has been facing a severe economic crisis, causing damage to the banking sector. Lebanese banks have reduced their services and no longer issue loans, have locked their clients’ out of accessing their dollar or foreign currency accounts and have blocked transfers abroad and make it difficult for customers to open new accounts.

This situation makes life difficult for everyone but especially for startups and businesses, who lack access to loans or financial services to grow their companies and therefore need to seek constant investment opportunities. For many remote employees working for companies based outside Lebanon, they face challenges in receiving their salaries and payments in Lebanon. For Syrians, the situation is even more complicated as they are not permitted to open bank accounts.

Residency and registration of businesses
For Syrians wishing to start a business, they must have a Lebanese partner or co-founder of the business in order to register it formally. Syrians in Lebanon are only legally permitted to work in three sectors – agriculture, construction or the environmental sector – in order to receive a work permit. One Syrian entrepreneur with a startup who has been living in Lebanon for over five years told the D66 delegation: “I’d prefer to pay to the Lebanese government instead of a broker, but there’s no laws for the people here. I’m willing to pay it every year for the residency, but the Lebanese government is losing too much money on this.”

Remote work
Yvonna Nehme, Program Coordinator at SE Factory, a partner organisation of SPARK, which trains young, aspiring programmers in tech bootcamps to equip them with critical employment skills, spoke about the organisation’s work. SE Factory has an almost 100% recruitment rate of youth that have taken part in their training into physical or remote jobs in the tech sector. 

Yet, Yvona explained, they still face challenges in attracting women to join the programme. “Recruiting women is one of the hardest things, especially that this needs early awareness. Giving them awareness about the STEM field in general, not only software development or employment. How you can start working from your house even if you’re guided from your youth to get married and stay home, [we tell them] you know what, you can still do that but you can also have a job.”

Laura Paterson, whose digital website agency, CONCAT, hires developers from marginalised backgrounds, including refugees and women, said: “We need more publicity in Europe about the talent here so that [companies] don’t just outsource to India or Serbia. There’s so much talent here…We need advocacy to break the stereotypes that exist about refugees.” 

Employability skills
Amir Bou Said, who studied a Bachelors in Communications Arts at the University of Science and Technology with a scholarship from SPARK, spoke of the importance of developing entrepreneurial and job readiness skills. Through his scholarship, Amir was able to access economic empowerment courses, one class of which was on CV writing and preparing for interviews. He told the room how this course had helped him to prepare for the job market, where he soon got an internship and now works remotely as an Agency Manager for Helpdose, a Dutch company based in Amsterdam, providing website management and marketing services.

Scaling businesses
Omar Itani, the 24-year-old Lebanese founder of FabricAID, a social enterprise and now the largest second-hand clothing collector in the MENA region, discussed how the company collects and distributes clothes to disadvantaged communities, which is beneficial for the environment and for creating jobs. He sees huge opportunities for Lebanon to harness the recycled and upcycled fashion industry, which has a long history in the country. He spoke of the challenges of accessing finance to scale his enterprise due to the banking restrictions but believes there are opportunities for public-private partnerships to support entrepreneurs with social enterprises.

Later, the D66 delegation visited one of FabricAID’s second-hand stores in Hamra’s bustling shopping street and paid a visit to the company’s factory in Beirut to see how the second-hand clothing is sorted, washed, repaired and upcycled.