Social entrepreneurship incubator up and running

Arcenciel initiates Nabad
with funding from USAID

A ‘social entrepreneurship incubator’, Nabad, was recently launched in Beirut with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Nabad is brought by the NGO Arcenciel in partnership with Beyond Reform & Development, a local social business and consultancy firm. The program is also supported by the 'Promoting Active Citizen Engagement' (PACE) program, a USAID-funded program to strengthen civil society capacity and social entrepreneurship.

The Nabad initiative aims at providing social entrepreneurs with the resources, expertise, and space to launch sustainable social enterprises, said Samer Sfeir, Program Coordinator at Nabad. He said the initiative gathers experts and professionals interested in putting their resources or knowledge at the service of social change.

The program assists youth and disadvantaged individuals in transforming their ideas into income-generating businesses. This could entail helping a group of young entrepreneurs in a rural area establish a small dairy farm on an agricultural plot, for instance.

Nabad had received 117 applications and selected 60 prequalified applicants to follow a three-day training starting August 2. After one month, 15 winners will be chosen based on their submitted business plans. Each winner will receive a reward between $5,000 and $10,000, and will also benefit from an incubation process.

Sfeir said that they are working closely to broaden the scope of their initiative. “We are collaborating with big local entrepreneurship ecosystems such as Berytech and Kafalat in order to reach out to more entrepreneurs, and offer participants more business opportunities.”