Accelerate Beirut

Accelerate Beirut is an initiative created  as a response to the August 4 blast in Beirut, with the objective of supporting local SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) and their workforce, as more than 10,000 SMEs were severely damaged by the explosion.

Beyond an emergency response, Accelerate Beirut aims to help promising SMEs during these challenging times by creating linkages and establishing partnerships with large global corporations.

The local companies were identified with the help of 3 partnering NGOs (Stand for Women, Nusaned and Alfanar) across different sectors such as Art & Crafts (fashion brands, jewelers, embroidery workshops, wood work…), Personal Care (soap brands), Hospitality (guest houses), F&B (restaurants, food brands…). These companies can benefit from a financial, strategic or technical support from their global corporate mentors. 

Accelerate Beirut was set-up by Alia Atieh in Paris in partnership with LIFE (Zeina Mhanna) and supported by volunteers working at Bain & Company on an individual basis (Sabine Atieh, Marc-André Kamel, Bruno Naccour, Ziad Nassar).