The Join & Grow event: Advocating corporate social procurement

BEIRUT: Despite the sophisticated technology designed to connect jobs and workers, a lot of young people hungry for work are still struggling to find a job. Behind this complication lies a misinterpretation between the demand of the market and its offers.

Jad Said and Youssef Mansour are university students at the moment and are respectively 19 and 21 years old. They joined an educational program during their last academic year given by Digital Opportunity Trust NGO, where they managed to get certificates and become digital experts.

The second phase of the program is executed by B.O.T which is part of the Generation of Innovation Leaders (GIL) program, Powered by UNICEF Lebanon & DOT Lebanon and Funded by The Deutsch & the German Embassies. This program gave them an opportunity to start freelancing. They worked on data entry, e-commerce, call center, coding and almost everything related to programming. They were able to help Caritas during the Syrian refugee crisis and they participated as well in the 2018 Lebanese elections with LIBALADI operating their data management.

“The whole experience is amazing, it’s almost enough for me that I get to support myself while I’m still in college, especially that I get the chance to work from home and also beside gaining digital skills, we learn how to function among a team and count on each other”, said Jad to Annahar.

The achievements that B.O.T. reached in a small period of time pushed the team to take a step forward.

A collaboration between the NGO and the Lebanese League for Women in Business (LLWB) conducted a discussion on how to advocate corporate social procurement (CSR) was hosted at L’atelier du miel Thursday evening.

“We are working with B.O.T on identifying 500 women in different areas in Lebanon, we want to get to know their needs especially the ones living in rural areas, only then we will be able to secure them with the right programs and job opportunities”, said Asmahan Zein, President of LLWB.

The mission behind this collaboration also lies in clarifying the different ways a company can generate measurable social outcome while purchasing goods and services.

“Quality is not a compromise when it comes to social procurement, we will train our purchasing team to be more socially responsible, to look at some standards while going through the value chain process of purchasing a good service and sometimes we reduce cost by supporting local economy,” said Mariane Bitar Karam, managing director of B.O.T.

What is still missing, in Karam’s opinion, is the unawareness of people of a platform which identifies the specific local service providers that can help the purchasing team find corporate sustainability.

“The outcome of CSR is creating employment opportunities, empowering local economies, supporting people in special needs and especially women, promoting fair and ethical trade and most importantly encouraging social enterprise’s businesses,” added Karam.

B.O.T. has opened communication with international platforms aiming to find thousands of new remote freelance opportunities for the youth of Lebanon.