Under the patronage of the Central Bank of Lebanon, as part of the Credit Project funded by Cisco, Relief International organized on April 26, 2011 a symposium on the theme of “Microcredit in Lebanon: ICT Lending”, at Jean El Hawa Auditorium – USEK Main Campus.

Following the opening speech by Mr. Selim Osman, lecturer at the USEK Faculty of Business and Commercial Sciences, Ms. Vrinda Dar, Country Director at Relief International Lebanon presented an overview of the organization mentioning that Relief International is a humanitarian non-profit agency that provides emergency relief, rehabilitation, development assistance, and program services to vulnerable communities worldwide. It started working in Lebanon during the July war in 2006, focusing on the south regions in order to provide relief to refugees.

Mr. Najib Anwar Choukair, Senior Director, Head of Banking Department at the Central Bank of Lebanon, highlighted in his speech the role of the Central Bank of Lebanon in regulating the microcredit sector in Lebanon, while both Mr. Georges Akiki, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs CSR Strategic Operations at Cisco, and Mr. Philippe Hajj, Deputy General Manager at Fransabank, highlighted in their presentations the role of the private sector in supporting the microcredit sector in Lebanon.

The symposium ended with a panel discussion on the CREDIT Program “Cisco Rural Enterprise Development for Information Technology”, moderated by Mr. Davis Broach, Director Social Enterprise at Relief International DC, and animated by the following speakers: Mrs. Jennifer Abou Mrad, Research Manager at Info, Mr. Ziad Halabi, General Manager at AMEEN S.A.L., Dr. Youssef Fawwaz, CEO of Al Majmoua, and Mr. Ali Hijazi, Director of the Microcredit program in Relief International.

All the speakers stressed the various microcredit programs that aim to improve the capacity of local Lebanese microfinance institutions to serve the ICT sector, to provide small entrepreneurs a variety of flexible financial products and adapted non financial services, to create small IT businesses in the rural areas of Lebanon in order to bridge the growing economic divide between urban and rural Lebanon.