Resulting from both the ongoing, socio-economic, political, and health crises in Lebanon, vulnerable women and girls in marginalized and rural areas of the country have suffered the most from the consequences of the numerous challenges. Based on recent studies focusing on the aftermath of the crisis and the most affected populations, Common Effort (CE) has decided to support the women in the deprived areas of Beirut, Bekaa, and South Lebanon by strengthening their psychological state and enabling them to develop economic resilience.

Over an 8-month timeframe, CE will first gather data and beneficiaries through specialized outreach officers presiding in the target areas. The target beneficiaries are women or girls of vulnerable groups, such as the LGBTQIA+ community, victims of early marriage and Gender Based Violence (GBV), and adolescent girls. Then, Common Effort will start providing the vulnerable women and girls with peer-to-peer (P2P) counselling sessions in order to help them strengthen their mental state and establish enough social cohesion to proceed to the final step of integrating them in the labor market. This integration takes place by initiating income generation and employment opportunities through the organization of business development workshops pertaining to 3 different Sectoral Productivity Clusters (SPC).

To guarantee this project’s success, CE will essentially focus on the following 3 objectives:

• Enhancing the psychosocial wellbeing of vulnerable and defenseless women from the most deprived areas of Lebanon through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) counselling sessions.
• Strengthening economic resilience of decentralized sector-focused women clusters through social business development workshops.
• Fostering efficient dialogue, cooperation and synergies between emerging social initiatives and relevant private and public sector’s stakeholders.

The project is divided into 9 activities:

• Mapping of the most vulnerable areas and select the direct beneficiaries
• Organizing psycho-social wellbeing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) counselling sessions
• Establishing mechanisms for Social Cohesion (with a focus on P2P counselling and Social Generativity)
• Assessing the needs of the selected groups and segregate them into Sectoral Productivity Clusters (SPC)
• Organizing social business development training workshops for SPCs
• Providing technical guidance for the establishment of social enterprises and community actions
• Supporting community-based interventions in accessing the MoreThanAJob portal
• Promoting dialogue and knowledge exchange between emerging social enterprises and relevant public and private sectors stakeholders
• Supporting the establishment of synergies between initiatives.

A needs assessment and collection of the subsequent data from the concerned public administrations was prepared distributed and collected, as well as the targeted beneficiaries themselves. The accuracy of the statistics provided by the PA, along with the results of the outreach officers’ questionnaires and interviews will indicate whether the project fulfills a need in the previously determined areas of Beirut, Bekaa, or the South.

Once the beneficiaries are gathered, and they have commenced the program, the effectiveness of the P2P sessions as well as the capacity building trainings will be evaluated based upon the established criteria in our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan. Regular reports provided by the trainers and the monitoring officer will focus on daily attendance and participation within the sessions. These reports will also be accompanied by periodical site visits by the M&E and project coordinators.

Furthermore, the participants will be given frequent satisfaction surveys to answer so that a holistic view of the P2P sessions’ effectiveness can be obtained. The same strategies will be adopted to determine the success of the workshops conducted as well.

Finally, the Regional Steering Committee for abused individuals, constructed by the collaboration of Common Effort with numerous stakeholders, will aid in establishing a proper Resource Mobilization Regional meeting that will regularly provide statistics and feedback showcasing the success rate of the project’s implementation after completion.