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.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 LogoMy 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.
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 !
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