NGO work

As requested by Paulinette, this post will tell you what I am doing exactly in Syria. I don't have much time tonight but I wanted to keep my word and post something on the blog.

I will develop more in another post.

So, I am currently doing a short internship (unpaid) in a Syrian NGO called the Syria Trust for Development.



As most of you already know, I have graduated from a master in International Development from the University of Bath (UK) after my first degree in Business Administration in HEC Montreal. A friend from Montreal (Mazen, not to mention him!) offered me the possibility to come to Damascus and work 2 months for FIRDOS (the Fund for Integrated Rural Development, a division of the Syria Trust).

Firdos Logo

My expertise in the development field is more on entreprise development (MSE and SME), entrepreneurship, and value-chain development. FIRDOS has different economic and social programmes targeting poor rural communities in Syria. At the moment, they have already a micro-finance scheme and they want to promote entrepreneurship among these rural communities. They also want to develop Business Development Services (BDS) for these micro-entrepreneurs.


The ultimate objective of donor intervention in Business Development Services (BDS) is to improve small enterprise performance in developing countries, as a means to achieve higher economic growth and employment, reduce poverty, and meet social objectives. Business Development Services include training, consultancy and advisory services, marketing assistance, information, technology development and transfer, and business linkage promotion. A distinction is sometimes made between "operational" and "strategic" business services.

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/ent/papers/guide.htm

As I have studied this topic for a long time in Bath, I am currently working on a research paper that aims to inform FIRDOS about the best practices to implement such services (with a special focus on Middle East). And I am also assisting in developing the strategy to provide these BDS services (impact, outreach, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, sustainability issues, etc...).

On the other hand, I am also working on a completely different topic : "Communication for Development". More specifically, I am working on how to improve "acces to information" in rural communities.

Communication for development (ComDev), according to FAO, is the systematic and participatory use of communication methods and tools to reach consensus and achieve common goals among the stakeholders of a given development initiative. Communication for development is considered as a social process, emphasizing the role communication plays at all levels facilitating information sharing, training and participation of urban and rural people in policy/programme formulation, planning and implementation.

More info available on the following website: http://www.comminit.com/

For the moment, I really enjoy my experience. My colleagues are all very nice, fun.and very competent. Most of them are in their thirties, perfectly fluent in english, and a couple of them also speak french. The office, situated in the new modern area of Damascus (Mazze, where all the embassies are) is about 20 minutes by micro-bus. So every morning, I am trying to get a seat in one of this very crowed micro-bus! It is quite an adventure but it is very cheap (10 syrian Pounds, about 15euro cents), so I take it most of the time. And when I am too lazy, I take the taxi and spend a lot of money: 70SYP (1euro). I know I am posh guy!


A microbus

Time to go to to party now, it is thursday night and it's the week end (friday and saturday in arabic countries) ! My landowner is a musician and he's playing tonight so I will go to his concert, and maybe clubbing a bit later. Thursday night fever in Damascus !

Back to blogging

Hello everybody,

I have been under tremendous pressure from you to update my blog, so after 20 days of rest, here we go!!! I have a lot of things to tell you about, so I promise 5 posts in the next 5 days! Lucky you :-)

(notice that there was a warning at the beginning of the blog explictly saying that if I was not updating it, that would mean that I was too busy discovering the Syrian Charms; well, it was exactly what happened !)

So, where should I start? In the last entry, I was still living in the Christian district of Bab Touma, in the middle of the Old city. I was telling you it was a labyrinth to go there, here is a short video to give you an insight of my daily walks:

http://dl.free.fr/bVTLyuost
30mg file (2 min). You can download it for free and with no virus (special offer !)

I spent about one week in this house and I really enjoyed it. The family was very nice and it was good to speak a bit French with Syrian people. After each day of work, I was spending some time with them, drinking tea, chatting a bit and watching Syrian TV (I couldn’t get a word, but Syrian music video clips are priceless !).

Some pictures of the family:

Sami, Eva, Laurice, Antino, and ...well you know him

But I was also going out most of the time, and that’s what I call…Back to normal life! (to be followed…tomorrow)


Fun Fact of the day: It has been officially the 47^th time today that I’ve been asked something in Arabic in the street (possibily directions but as I don’t understand, it may also be “you are awesome” or “I am sure France will beat Ireland tonight”). People really believe that I am Syrian! 3 possible reasons:
- tourists or students usually don’t walk alone in the streets
- I look confident (a Syrian guy told me that)
- I really look Syrian (after Greece this summer, I am really starting to think that I have a universal face !)