Refugees Crisis

completed

Project Description for Public Disclosure: To address the refugee crisis, IFC proposes to support The Lebanese Association for Development (Al-Majmoua), the leading and largest microfinance institution who has been trying to implement activities that benefit Syrian refugees and hosting communities in Lebanon by helping these institutions to develop new products that cater to the needs of these unique segments of the population. Under this project, IFC proposes to support Al-Majmoua through the development of two products: -Very Small Enterprise (VSE) Product Development: IFC will support Al-Majmoua in scaling up their lending to Very Small Enterprises (VSEs) with a particular focus on host communities, which will in turn directly or indirectly increase employment opportunities for the hosting communities including the Syrian refugees. -Very small equity Product Development: IFC will also support Al-Majmoua in developing a very small equity product that can be targeted at both Syrian refugees and host communities. This idea emerged as a result of the fact that Al-Majmoua (under a project with UNHCR which is coming to an end), has already been working with women from the hosting communities and Syrian refugees to do embroidery work and has given the women the required machinery to do so as a grant. In order to make this a more sustainable and scalable initiative, IFC will work with Al-Majmoua to design and pilot a very small equity product whereby they provide an asset, share revenues with the asset holder and allow the asset holder to gradually buy the assets.