 Hi everyone, welcome to today's event organized by the GSAP Collective for Beirut. I'm really thrilled to have this ongoing conversation at this school. Over the last decade Lebanon has really been struggling with an economic meltdown, hosting the highest number of refugees per quota in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic, political vacuum, and one of the biggest human-made explosions to modern history happened there just a year ago on August 4th. This event belongs to a series of works that shed light on the current state of Beirut and is part of one big conversation at GSAP thanks to our alumni, our faculty, and our students. FAST initiatives so far have included the November 12th event emergency architecture and planning, recovering Beirut post-explosion, which brought together a group of multidisciplinary professionals to around-table discussion that explored ideas about architecture and cities in a time of emergency. In the spring of 2021, the research seminar Reconnecting Beirut brought together faculty and students from all over the world to wrestle with challenging questions following the port blast, and the publication produced Reconnecting Beirut compiled all of the students' work to mark the one-year anniversary of the blast. Throughout this process, editors of the publication also sought out additional Lebanese and international experts in architecture, urban planning, public health, and more to reflect on the current needs of Beirut. I want in particular to thank faculty, Richard Plans, and Victor Bodilossin for their leadership across the studio and seminar and in supporting the students, our alumni, and the publication in particular. There's a beautiful book by a professor at the Université Saint-Joseph called Beirut 2020, The Story of a Collapse, and it's a daily diary of the situation, and I've always felt that it is, for better or for worse, a prism through which sometimes we can see other places in the world and a sense of collapse and hope that we tend to hold together. So I'm really excited today to be welcoming together scholars, designers, activists, and development professionals to think about ways of transforming many of the sort of brilliant ideas, temporary fixes, and other that hopefully will bring new life to the city and bring new ideas to other cities around the world. Welcome. Well, I just want to mirror Amal's comments and thank everyone who organized this event. And of course to thank Amal because she's she's supported the studio since what is it? August 5th, day two, and it's in the report. It's a kind of long story. We were going to do something else in Beirut, and then of course the explosion happened. So for us here, we're able to get this together. And I would also thank our students, of course. I hope some of them are on, and we'll hear from them, and especially though there was a follow-up seminar in the spring. The studio was in the fall and they really persevered in getting this getting the report together to making more coherent sense of the studio and had a lot of interest and empathy in a place which of course Beirut, a place which we could not visit. So I think they deserve a lot of credit. And they come from many parts of the world, which is always interesting, but I think in the end maybe we can find a bit of the Beirut situation in other cities. So there was a kind of let's say sympathy that went beyond the explosion itself with the general situation of governance. So the studio focus evolved to a place where we could not, we didn't know where it was going at the beginning. Let's just say it, and it did evolve in a way that makes some sense at least we think. And of course we're really pleased that somehow the work could be a catalyst for this kind of discussion that we're having today and maybe make a small difference. I don't know I don't know. Victor, are you with us yet? No, I guess not. Well, there was several people that really helped with the studio, part Amal, and I think they're there with us today. Of course, Serge Yazigi is one of the people who'll be speaking. Then there was Markelle DeMarco, who is with WHO and it's been very influential in kind of the direction of the work in general. There was Philippe DeCourt, who is with the UN Habitat and really very supportive. Nur Zogbi-Pares is a GSAP alum. Was extremely helpful in getting the site work together and following things. Of course, Yasmin, who was the student really in charge of putting together the report, was way beyond the call of duty to do that. Maria Palosuto in the Urban Design Lab was actually her idea and her initiative that got us started on this in the first place. So we owe a great deal of thanks to her. I'm sure there are others, but anyway, I will stop and pass it along so we can get started. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. So the event today from emergency patchwork to the long term is an attempt to continue talking about Beirut and its needs. The abstract that we put together focused on looking at the needs of Beirut after two years of economic crisis, the pandemic and the August 4, 2020 port last. Ever since we noticed that emergency initiatives such as remittances by the diaspora or the actual transport of essential supplies through commercial travel have temporarily relieved the Lebanese community ecosystem and crumbling infrastructure. However, with no centralized or national organization in sight, such efforts are nothing more than patchwork solutions. And this is where our conversation is starting. So the livelihood of communities in Beirut today and beyond are really hinged on this very unsteady lifeline of supplies, be it food, medication, clean water, energy and more. And our main question is how can these initiatives of emergency patchwork transform to longer term solutions and sustained systems that lead to prosperity? We have a great lineup of activists and people working in development as well as urban planning and design and much more in scholarship that are trying to find ways to make this happen. So here's a brief introduction of each of our panelists. And then each panelist will have a few minutes to present a short presentation. And then we will kick it off with some questions. So Amina Merkbawi is a former board director and Beirut disaster relief fund committee representative at Impact Lebanon. Born and raised in Norway as half Lebanese and half Norwegian, Amina started to develop a strong connection to Lebanon during her first trip five years ago while volunteering in a refugee camp in Beirut. Her passion for humanitarian work further unfolded through her engagement as a volunteer in Shatila refugee camp as a mentor at Environment Academy and involvement with several non-governmental organizations in Lebanon. With an interest and an academic background in emerging economies and international development, Amina obtained her master's researching aid effectiveness in Lebanon at Kings College London. Now she is based in Beirut working as a youth innovation manager at UNICEF which involves providing innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities for vulnerable youth as well as applying innovation and creative thinking to humanitarian programming. Our second panelist is Elias Khalil who's a member of Muatinoon and Muatinaat Fidaula, MMFD, which stands for Citizens in a State. It is a progressive opposition party in Lebanon. MMFD's specific aim is to turn the unfolding crisis into an opportunity for the formation of a secular, democratic, just and potent state in Lebanon. Elias is based out of Canada where he's an assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of Toronto. Our third panelist is Manal Kahale. Raised in Lebanon, Manal studied landscape architecture at the American University of Beirut and holds a master's degree in lighting design from Parson School of Design. She worked in the US for four years before deciding to go back to Lebanon and try and bridge both worlds through lighting. However, her return to Lebanon was much more difficult than anticipated with the unfolding economic crisis, the pandemic and finally the August 4th, 4th last. This catastrophic unlocked feelings of communal support triggered by the complete absence of any relief efforts on the part of the Lebanese government. And as a result, Manal decided to use her knowledge and experience to partake in relief efforts as a citizen and a lighting activist. Thus, Light for Lebanon was created in partnership with Light Reach, a program focused on providing rapidly deployable solar lighting solutions to support the residents of Beirut affected by the August 4th explosion. Our next panelist is Saaj Yazeji, who is an architect, urban planner and head of Yazeji Atelier since 2005. He's also a regional consultant in sustainable development in Mashrik and Mahrib countries. In parallel, Yazeji acted as a senior consultant for Dar al-Handasa, Taliban partners in architecture and planning projects in Lebanon and the region between 1999 and 2009. He has led several projects financed by international organization in relation to urban renewal and strategic planning in Lebanon and the region. In 2007, he founded Majal, the academic urban observatory at Alba University of Belamand with the aim of facilitating research and assisting localities in the formation of adaptive development strategies. He has also directed several publications in relation to planning law and regulation. Currently, Saaj is an adjunct professor of urban planning and design at the American University of Beirut. Saaj holds a PhD in contemporary history in the field of urban renewal from the University of Baudotois, France. Finally, last but not least, Yara Akari is an international development professional with more than 10 years of experience, including six years working at AF Finance, where she was a project manager supporting renewable energy and energy access projects for the Inter-American Development Bank and USAID and Haiti, Uganda and Kenya. As a consultant, she has expertise in project management, market research, business development, strategy design, monitoring and evaluation on topics including access to finance, community engagement, energy access and climate change to agencies such as GIZ, USAID, UNDP and UNESCO. Yara works as a consultant and team leader at Greenmax Capital Advisors in New York and is also managing a woman empowerment initiative between Centre d'Orian, a private soap company in Lebanon and the UNDP. The initiative consists in training, mentoring and increasing opportunities for low-income women in Lebanon. Yara holds a Master's in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and a Master's and a Bachelor in International Economics from Paris du Quentin Access University. And I will have Iad introduce the speakers. Thank you Maureen for the brief introduction for the speakers. I also want to thank Ziaad Jamaldeen for joining us. People who don't know Ziaad Ziaad is an educated and practitioner. He teaches at Columbia. So we're going to start with the presentations by the panelists and then later on we're going to move to the questions. Please, it's going to be organic, a conversation. Everyone, please share your thoughts. We'll start with Amina Markavi. I just want to briefly introduce everyone to Impact Lebanon, the organization itself. It's funded by members of the Lebanese diaspora in London. Following the Beirut uprising of October 17th and the organization is 100% volunteer run. It composes now of a diverse group of 120 active members. The mission of the organization is to act as a hub for initiatives that deliver a positive impact for Lebanon. And yeah, thank you. Can look to the next one. Yeah, so here you can see some of the areas, some of the members are coming from all over the world. It's very bottom up, grass root driven. And it, you know, is actually drives by this collaboration between organizations in Lebanon and the diaspora itself. Following the Beirut blast, the organization set up quickly a crowdfunding campaign. We raised about exactly $9.2 million. So as a volunteer organization, we quickly had to put in place organizational procedural measures. We launched a fund strategy and set up fund transfer processes, fund allocation and monitoring teams and developing key partnerships to extend our capabilities to deliver the fundraisers objectives. Eventually we ended up funding 18 different NGOs within six verticals, residential rehabilitation, heritage rehabilitation, micro and small businesses support, livelihood, medical and hospital support, mental health and community support. On this topic, speaking about how these emergency initiatives can transform into long-term solution, we think it's a key question to ask about aid dependence, where many argue that assistance of this kind of nature can pose a barrier to the country's development and sustainable economic growth. And you rarely hear about countries becoming developed by aid. You can often rather on the other end hear about countries becoming dependent on aid intentionally or not. But when it's used as a long-term strategy, it can inhibit development and progress and reform. So on this note, I'd like to distinguish between emergency aid and development aid. And for impact, this disaster relief fund was a major turning point. We saw it as a unique emergency situation. And we had to rethink our role in the context of the broader ongoing civil society efforts in Lebanon. And we long-term decided to focus on our goals, which are driving civic engagement and political awareness in the diaspora, as well as building the capacity of institutions and individuals in Lebanon, just to mention a few initiatives that we have, which is Saudi and Marmot Academy. Thank you. Thank you, Amina. Elias. Yes. Thanks, Iyad and Maureen. And thanks to the G.S.A.P. Collector for Beirut for inviting me. I'm representing Muatinooma Muatina Fidawla, who's a citizen in a state in English, which is a political party in the opposition that was formed in 2016 in anticipation of the coming economic crisis, one which we now know retrospectively that, you know, there were many indices for that were, of course, ignored by the ruling parties and also by foreign powers who are interested in Lebanon. And unfortunately, at the time, Muatinoom's plea was not very effective at moving the state of affairs towards anticipating recognizing and potentially avoiding the crisis, which we came to experience in very ugly ways since the end of 2019. But there arose this opportunity for our political party and other opposition parties to, you know, seize the moment and grow and try to actually form an alternative, a real political alternative, which can get enough support and backing to make an impact. So in my presentation, I will try to relate our political objectives and goals to the questions of this panel of this meeting. So the main question posed here is the following. The livelihoods of communities in Beirut and beyond are hinged to this unsteady lifeline of supplies. How can these initiatives transform the longer term solutions and sustained systems that make prosperity? So in this panel, I try to argue for the following answer through our involvement as concerned citizens, and here I don't mean just myself, I mean also other Lebanese citizens and or residents on the call, our involvement within a well-defined transformative political project that can quickly lay the foundations to a civil state and initiate economic reconstruction on the basis of the interests of Lebanon citizens and residents. So there's lots of fancy words in there and I'll try to break them apart in the next few slides. So by transformative political project, I'd like to contrast that with patchwork alone. So patchwork in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Certain circumstances, such as following the August 4th last, some patchwork was definitely needed and necessary in the absence of a functional state and also lack of financial resources to support any kind of reconstruction or emergency measures. But patchwork alone will not be sufficient in the long term and this I will argue hopefully later on in the panel is due to really just simple material economic reasons. So it's not bad on its own, it's just not sufficient. It might be necessary in some cases. And also transformative stands in sharp contrast with certain theories of change from inside the system, which have been kind of advocated following the formation of the Hasandia government a year and a half ago, where there were many PhDs on the cabinet, many supposedly highly educated experience, private sector experience individuals there that ended up really not doing anything for most of the term of this cabinet. It was not active at all. And in the one instance where it did anything, which is one economic plan, the same plan was shut down by the same political parties that brought this cabinet about. So change from inside is not possible, hence the need for a project, which is transformative and political in nature. Another keyword here is quickly. So time is of the essence. What I'd like to contrast that with is three other scenarios. One, which other individuals or opposition groups advocate for is long term incremental change. The idea that society might be a sectarian, might not have recovered from the aftermath of the civil war and so on and so forth. Hence we need a process of free reeducation that starts from the bottom up that might take a generation or two before its effects kick in. There's a clear counter argument to that, which we hold, which is that we would like to save as much of our current society as possible. The costs of that are not factored into any plan for long term incremental change. So one must set the basis for protecting what we currently have. And by that we don't mean just material resources, but individuals, people, et cetera, before we can start thinking about long term incremental change. The other element that is also kind of in a race with any quick transformation is the risk of local regional settlements. So this is something that we are literally at the risk of at the moment with the Mikati cabinet, the risk that what happened in following the civil war in 1990 happens again where the main states that are at conflict, supposedly in Lebanon, come to an agreement and decide to refloat the same sectarian ruling political class to the detriment of the population. And third is the mass forced immigration and increasing poverty that is accelerating day to day. And any kind of long term change will really not be able to help those people, the people we are losing now to good jobs abroad, or those who are taking risks with their lives, getting on small boats to cross to Turkey or Greece, where we might never get them back. And that we think is a crucial factor to think about. So when we say a civil state, there's two main words here civil and state, starting with state, we believe that there was never really a state in Lebanon. So the illusion that we've had a state and potential we can tweak a thing or two and get there is for us extremely unlikely. We've only had kind of this mishmash of sectarian leaders that just handle the interests of their groups at different times, not really any form of central state by civil here and there's a nuance for civil and secular, but we use civil to say non militaristic and a state in which citizens deal directly with the state, not through mediation with a sectarian leader or church or any kind of religious sect authority. And so this stands in sharp contrast with the current sectarian arrangement. And also other less thought out arrangements, ones which, you know, maybe undermine the existence of a strong central state, we believe that for a small country like Lebanon, such a state is the only viable form for governance in a democratic state. And we need to initiate economic reconstruction. This is also in contrast with relying eternally, either on foreign political dollars, so said, said Paris one, Paris two, said three, etc, all these initiatives which ended up actually funding the system, which collapsed on our heads. Also, eternal reliance on expat transfers, you know, that's a function of global economic conditions. And also on partial sectoral solutions, you know, small fixes in one of these sectors that I'm listing here. So these are all non tradable basic services. Any solution that only hits one of these is probably going to affect possibly negatively others. So thinking about education alone without public transport is probably not going to do it, because people can't get around. And this is a problem we're currently facing. And last, the focus on the interest of Lebanon's citizens and residents, this is in contrast with the interest of individual sects. This is how the current political class sees citizens, not as citizens of Lebanon, but citizens of particular sets, and also the interests of foreign powers who might at times seem to be, you know, wholeheartedly looking to help Lebanon. But really, we need to think of them as external powers with interest, and us as an internal power with its own interest. And the process that happens after that is one of negotiation with other nations. And so that's our political project, one which we think could benefit from, you know, all of you's contribution and interest. And I hope to argue for that more coming out. Thank you. Thank you, Elias. I think we're going to discuss a lot about the role of architects and designers adopting a political project later on. So that would be very helpful. The next person is Manal. Hi, everyone. Let me just put it on the PowerPoint. So first of all, thank you for having me here today. I'm here to talk about like for Lebanon and how it is both a short term and a long term solution for Lebanese and those kinds of things. So first of all, I'm going to talk a bit about the problem. And I'm going to take you a few steps back. And for those who are not very familiar with the situation today, Lebanon has undergone some huge changes in the past few years and still is. And we are going through one of the largest economic crisis, political instability, the explosion, the power outage, not to mention the pandemic and shortest of fuel and whatnot. And all of this has led to some drastic changes in an urban set of an identity. And we can see this in our homes, on the streets and the communities with the people and in our cities that have now turned into those towns. And these changes translates and lighting questions. So everyone, not just lighting designers, understand the consequence of the absence of light, theft, theft increased. There is already PTSD available all around. There's a negative impact on the economy due to the closure of businesses, restaurants, shops, and as lighting designer, we looked at the impact of the blasts on the lighting situation. And the questions we have asked ourselves are, first of all, what can be done now as an individual to remedy the sudden darkness? And this is taking into consideration that there is already an existing grid, that there are other aids that we don't know were kept in the dark of where they're going to be implemented. So we wanted to make sure not to overlap in our efforts and making our efforts temporary or go to waste. The second question we raised was what can be done now towards the long term? And this is making sure that there's existing products, it's affordable. And of course, with the future of design, sustainable, which led us to the third question, what do we need to rebuild a sustainable bay route? So I was drawn to solar lighting. And of course, when we're in a state of emergency, we don't recreate, we don't reinvent the wheel. So I reached out to my former thesis advisor, who's NGO operates a Global Solar Lighting Initiative for Communities, which have been done in Haitian and Puerto Rico. And we partnered to launch the Light for Lebanon program. So you can see over here, we have Light for Lebanon applies to tier model. And we have three scales. The three scales are, first of all, the portable lights, which are very quickly distributed for homes, for school, for cultural promotion in terms of playing around, having kids play around with light and use it in different ways. We also have a security floodlights that are used at entry building, entryways, and also an architectural landscape, depending on the projects and what are the needs. And we have the street lights, which are used for the streets and the public sector. Now for the process. So for any intervention, first of all, we need to what we what we needed to do is establish, first of all, jurisdiction, which must be coordinated with some governmental entity. And our case, it was the municipality and the army, since Lebanon was going through the emergency relief situation. So we filled out the necessary administration and legal paperwork. We then collaborated with NGOs that are already on the ground and connected to communities, because we need to help each other, help each other technically, and then engage with residents to hear their needs and best address the community's contacts, let people as well guide us to towards the places they use that need that need to be revived with light. So when we are doing a project, the first things we look at are, first of all, of course, the location. We look at the road with an collaboration with in coordination with the building heights to see if there's enough sunlight coming in and seeing the community to know what who really is living there, what how are they using the space. And we have a lack of public spaces in Lebanon. So just seeing the informal gathering spaces and listening to where they want to where people what are the spaces people want to use. So we started then by the process by doing a site analysis. I'm leaving the team on the ground and our US team includes expats who are the fundraiser ambassadors and the light helping us raise the funds. And then we have a light reach team which administrates the program and handles the logistics. We work with the volunteers to survey the night condition and we test our products to make sure that the tools we're using are powerful enough and it's not how to use them, where to use them. And we met with several NGOs to explore the opportunities and partner on existing and future renovation and reconstruction projects. And you can see over here just literally going door to door seeing what's out there. And seeing how our products will start making an impact hopefully on the ground. So for the program implementation, we typically follow a collaborative process and all the installations are done with our partner NGOs and local residents and any volunteer on the ground. So the portable were door to door where we started handing them off the that was the intervention. And then the security floodlights which sometimes are used as you can see in the picture here for any time with a sensor, anytime anyone enters a building it goes to for brightness or sometimes for landscape purposes whenever we have canopies blocking any entryway or road. And the street lights where we started we collaborated with Live Love Beirut and installed a road leading to a hospital. So other than anything that was needed on the ground we also urban lighting is important not just from a utilitarian viewpoint it is also important for placemaking and projects become beacons for the surrounding communities. So we are designing like for architectural and landscape projects where you can see landmark buildings where we were testing out which tools will be best to start highlighting those and create beacons in the city and bring back life or going towards any place that has a potential to be a gathering space and recreate a public space by using the landscape and highlighting those beautiful elements that make our city unique. We also believe that the urban we also believe that the vision and mission of light reach is that light is about life after dark and we consider that art and culture are an essential part of life. So we also intervene we also try to intervene as much as possible with anything that revives the community itself and makes them want to stay in Lebanon or use their get a little bit of hope in those dark days. So we have for example we partnered up with a new senate where we had a project we participate a group of foreign students that wanted to create a little space for children to play and and so we use the solar lights of different scale the two first scales and try to make it useful even at night and then we also did the temporary art platform which was reviving the forest abandoned along the river of Beirut and try to use the products in the most creative way possible and making sure of course always keeping in mind vandalism and all those things and maintenance which yeah which you can I'm not gonna waste your time with all of that but it's all taken into consideration which you can check out in our social media or websites. Thank you. Thank you Manal now we'll go to search. Yes hello so thank you Iyad and Mori for this invitation. Actually I will I will definitely react as an urban planner which I mean this is my main hat. Even though also I'm a political activist but we might talk about this a bit later. So when when the blast happened I would like to to show you one one two plans that were circulated a few weeks most of you are quite familiar with those plans so it kind of subdivided an already very much fragmented area socially economically politically combinatorially and confessionally fragmented and very much vulnerable and those were the plans that were kind of trying to organize the work of all the the NGOs local international and regional association working on the ground and again you can show also the two others I mean they reproduce all those subdivisions and this raised our fears actually and several of colleagues friends of mine also we started feeling that do we really want to be turned into another Haiti and we had some of us had the opportunity to be part of the discussions that were led by international organizations and I mean major stakeholders that were that wanted to to to contribute or felt that they were concerned by this reconstruction effort and the the motto I mean the the discussion what we tried always to bring back on the table is that please don't put the government aside whatever is our differences and situation and whatever is our political opinion of this government needless I mean to elaborate on that but definitely because my generation of urban planners was conscious about the construction of the downtown by Solidaire a private company and Majal that I founded was founded in the aftermath of the Israeli war of the south and states and in the objective also of monitoring reconstruction so we said come on guys we learned from previous reconstruction there's a limit of what others can do if we don't put on the table national institutions I'll go back to that point because actually some of the international and major stakeholders kind of reacted positively to our discourse up to a certain point but meanwhile also we collaborated with Columbia very quickly I had this idea of organizing I mean to try to have a comprehensive approach in the reconstruction uh Columbia World Project also showed interest into that and we organized something like eight nine uh the major conversation which brought also on the table something like 300 international experts on topics like public spaces heritage port reconstruction infrastructure and so on and they elapsed for several months with the objective of kind of formulating a global vision for the reconstruction but meanwhile also that was done so with the Beirut urban lab to which I'm also affiliated and also the Beirut urban lab kind of started pushing forward for a new discourse so trying to promote the recovery notion as to an opposition to the reconstruction stating that recovery might be more fitted to what is happening and they took I mean the uh with the with uh uh under the lead of Dr. White that had to see so uh a group of uh uh expert started working on the quarantine and are still working there with this bottom up approach and trying to say that recovery also entails the social and economic dimension and not only the physical rehabilitation and it's definitely a long process so each time trying to say we learned from what happened and even though uh the work done by NGOs is incredibly important and we compare some of them as being heroes because they really worked into very difficult conditions and if they were not there I think the situation would have been really really terrible so but we we we need to to to reflect on a different dynamic okay as as urban plans and the funny thing is that if the state didn't actually react positively to us asking the state to act and to react and to assume its responsibilities but they were very much interested into another project and that was the port so I was also assigned by the order of engineers and architect to prepare the working sessions on the port reconstruction for the urban declaration of the OEA and there we discovered that many actors were coming with plans and that actually behind the scenes uh local uh local central institutions were very much interested and they were pushing forward for those plans and saying we are eager to take responsibility and to play our role so this discrepancy which is quite terrible and and very much uh unfortunate between a project that could bring some money and could kind of open the appetite of some investors versus the the those very much important neighborhood where the the state said no I'm not interested let let the others work and and do their their responsibilities so I will stop here just to respect my few minutes but I'm definitely uh eager to to react on all those points later on thank you thank you Serge last tiara yes hello um so I wanted to actually do something a little bit different um I of course as a Lebanese I'm aware of obviously the current situation and I have experience working in Lebanon but I thought it would be interesting for me to share um let me share my presentation to share um uh some work that I have done recently in Haiti and kind of to present an example of what can be done uh I'll make that sign bigger okay what can be done in um in in a country that has actually some similarities with um with with Lebanon um so I just want to make sure you're seeing the full screen um so here so so I've I've worked for several years in Haiti um that was right after the earthquake so as probably most of you know there was a huge earthquake in 2010 Haiti's a radio country where um there was a very low access to um grid electricity at the time it was 28 percent of the population and um and same as Lebanon I mean there's a high level of remittances so very um you know big diaspora community mostly based in the US Canada where most of them were actually sending money to Haitian back in the country and and a fourth of this money of those remittances on a monthly basis was actually spent by the local household to buy gas kerosene to be able to like have some sort of energy source in the house so um and so as you probably know I mean Haiti has also unfortunately a lot of similarities also with Lebanon in terms of like the issues with government with corruption a weak public sector um uh and so there was a huge focus on humanitarian solution at first especially post the earthquake um and so I worked on a project that I think is interesting here to share especially that we want to work look at sustainable models and long-term solutions so I thought okay I'll share I'll share this example so in this project that I worked on we were trying to link to find a more sustainable way to link remittances to actually a solar product for two reasons to get people to you know give access to people to be reliable and safe source of energy um and also to to uh to you know to um avoid like all the issues with climate change of course and the problem with differentiation and um and the use of kerosene and and the issues with also using candles so I know now in Lebanon as you know Manal also explained there's a huge um issue of like access to light and energy electricity um so so basically in this project we were trying to not donate and that's one thing that I want to highlight is obviously after events like earthquakes there's a lot of donation right so all the emergency initiatives that are in place and one of them in the case of Haiti was donating solar light and what happened a couple years later when we tried to put together this project working along the private sector is that all those donations kind of spoiled the market and there was two things there was a creative dependency on aid I mean of course when it came to food as well and a lot of different um uh things that were donated or you know helped Haitian at the time and it also it also created the distortion of the market so you're not incentivizing the local people to actually pay for something but they're expected to have it as a donation so basically in two words that project we put together was trying to find the link between the Haitian diaspora the remittances sent to the country and enable them to place an order directly for a solar home system um uh when you know a couple of lights sometimes mobile phone charging radio sometimes it comes with tv sets I mean there's a bunch of things that we could you could do with a solar home system and um and trying to get also find financial mechanisms so Haitian could afford the system so that was like working with um micro finance institution or sometimes the solar product provider would provide some type of financing you know payment and installment you know in four month five months six month or more and so basically the reason why I'm talking about this is really I was trying to see okay what's what are the main differences between you know humanitarian intervention which is of course very needed you know but then when you look at long-term solutions and of course it takes more time to implement design and then implement a business model but it requires market research it requires like what is really crucial is the identification of the local and international partners and you know draft all the agreements um but the the usually the business solutions are you know involving the public and also the private sector and the focus here is really on the private sector as I know Lebanon has you know very a lot of smart engaged community the diaspora is also very engaged in you know helping helping Lebanon and so I think that you know putting all this like private sector in use especially at times where where maybe the public sector could be a little bit of an issue um I mean could be great in the it's a great lesson learn as well for Lebanon and so you know as I think a few people mentioned in our presentation too much aid can kill aid in a way because you're in you're not incentivizing people to find local solutions and I think what we learn now with the blast and the issue with the currency and everything is like you need local solutions you can't rely on importation all the time or you know so yes I think I think you know and the last point would be the whole education awareness raising capacity building is also key and that's one of the key of the success of a sustainable solution versus a more short-term patchwork solution thank you very much thank you Yara and and thank thank you everyone now Maureen is going to start with the questions the one thing that I want to say it's thank you for the impressive presentations and looking like at the different scales of interventions and dimensions that impact the livelihoods of the residents of Lebanon from architecture to political urban economical and looking forward for the discussion Maureen thank you Iyad one of the first questions we had prepared for the panelists is you know in the wake of the precarious socioeconomic and political situation exacerbated by the pandemic as you know the baby port blast port blast and the banking system failure the country has been witnessing numerous emergency relief initiatives as we saw in these presentations as well as grassroots organization to aid community initiatives including rebuilding efforts in kind distribution of goods resort to sustainable energy solutions fundraising efforts and much more so our question really is from your experience as either a giver or a receiver and or an observer of such initiatives what do you think are the structures bureaucracies and logistics needed for these initiatives to actually strive and another question you follow up question to that is that how do you find communities are reacting to such efforts here I can see a lot in you know a lot of this in Amina's work as well as in Elias's work but others other panelists are also welcome to jump in go ahead Amina thank you like you said yeah it's been part of our work for sure and especially in emergency situation when there's a lack of governance you really kind of you lack all these structures and work because these logistics that he's needed eventually was started to develop slowly but in the immediate response it would have obviously been very helpful with rules and regulations quality and standards especially when it comes to reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure for this to happen in a safe and a secure manner also do no harm policies in place and in terms of effectiveness of the delivery to have established coordination and collaboration in place as well and all of this especially when it comes to these immediate grassroots and NGO response it happened kind of organically after time but on the second note when you're asking about the community's reaction the communities and the beneficiaries in these houses were kind of left for as a decision maker on what kind of support do you need what can you actually receive the NGOs visiting people in their homes asking them about their needs several NGOs were you know doing these assessments visiting people and you're leaving the communities and the individuals as a decision maker of what can I aid do I need what do I what can I get how do I wish to receive it they don't know what kind of quality they will receive are there any rules and regulations in place and this was questions for I can imagine for the individuals that were approached by these NGOs there was so many of them as you know on the ground responding to the blast so for these initiatives to really like bring on good impacts there there is definitely a need of rules and regulations logistics and for aid to be to development it needs to complement the strategy and national strategy and an overall plan that fosters sustainability and development and from impact Lebanon's inside when we were selecting NGOs to receive funding we hired a third party vetting and quality insurance organization to guarantee that the supporters donations reached a political non-sectarian transparent and proficient NGOs thank you Amina I just have a quick follow-up question so what was the process that impact Lebanon went through to identify those beneficiaries that are not you know not secular not politically affiliated etc that's such a good question so we got 150 applicants we first of all selected based on the proposals we had them a partner called it out that helped us skin is skimming through the proposals and as you know that we're based in the Aspora we didn't have the full overview what's happening it was very messy so we hired this third party organization called 3QA to go to the NGOs they gather all the information the financial data what they've done in the past registration documents they interviewed them went to the background of every single member and really dig into the organizations to make sure that yeah non-sectarian a political and all these requirements were met by the organization before signing any MOU thank you so much Amina would anyone else like to jump in for this question I can go go ahead and yes Manon do you want to go Manon we can no no it's okay you can go first okay thanks so so one of the keywords in the in the court so I'll speak first as a as an observer of these let's say emergency efforts but also as a receiver through my parents whose home was damaged in on all the sport so I got to see although from distance how they benefited from you know immediate aid we're talking you know on the next day basically help with picking up glass and just stapling some kind of half door to just close things off and you know temporary housing with family and all those things which many people have had to go through and this speaks to to my initial point in the in the presentations that such efforts with you are in many cases necessary but not sufficient and so if we think about emergencies two things come to mind I really would like to minimize you know the the chances of having more and more emergencies may be you know hopefully not some other blasts or even climate emergencies which many places in the world are kind of bound to run into in the next few decades and you know we might be victims of that with maybe sea level rise in the Mediterranean or things like that so there are things we can't control and things we can't if we wanted to have proper emergency preparedness then of course there's a role to be played by a state which anticipates in advance possibilities you know think FEMA in the US and of course Lebanon does not need anything like like FEMA given its its scale so it's a in general a much simpler case than than most countries which maybe the countries we live in which are much larger and much more exposed to such possible disasters so there's there's that need and even within NGO type you know contributions to relief after following emergencies the question of just the basic logistics is also an obvious one you cannot put together you know a transportation network overnight if you wanted to you know just a charter path to transportation of certain basic materials and goods that is something that you know should be kind of put together or set in advance as part of national development policy right which could also benefit from external help but that's something that you plan out over you know at least years if not if not decades and so from the perspective of individuals who are contributing to such initiatives for us the question should be where does my effort or this bounded number of hours that I'm able to spend you know offering my services to Lebanon and its people what's the best place to put in that effort and we think that putting all of that effort into only you know relief initiatives again however necessary they may be is possibly not the best use of your time and energy and at least part of that should be part of that effort should be spent towards something transformative which we think can only be you know a clear political project and you know we we hope to be offering one such political project among others thank you so much Alias there's a lot to digest there and I see links already with the conversations that have already been presented we will hear Manal's response then we'll call on Philippe and Michele yes sorry I had a small power outage here but so I just wanted to bring up just one topic about communities reacting to such efforts and speaking of a sustainable solution and solar in particular there was a lot of skepticism at first and our solution was to push really hard towards a pilot project to prove that it works at first and the second part of it is give ownership to people because we tried we have two solutions two techniques when you want to install the solar lights it's either on existing poles that are owned by the municipality and the government or on facades of buildings and of course we tried as much as possible to keep them to keep the involvement easier via residents and facades and give them ownership and let them know that this is their product this is theirs to take care of and keeping them as involved as possible helped a lot in creating more awareness and helping push that effort forward so it was just this little aspect I wanted to make sure because communities it was really important to involve everyone around us for so many reasons including theft and vandalism all those things is important to start by the people themselves so that's thank you Manal for this very on the ground observation you know sometimes we talk about ideas and concepts and we forget that it's actually people's lives that we're trying to improve and it's it really starts with how they receive the some of these like efforts that you know these initiatives are trying to achieve next we'll go Philippe de Corte who was actually the head of UN habitat program development here in New York City and played a big role during the the studio as well as with the publication with professor Richard Plants and professor Victor Bodilasen take it away Philippe. Thanks Marina I must say the question is very difficult and I said I had a long conversation on this which is partly captured in the publication and so maybe a couple of thoughts are building on on the presentations one and we know that the way society was functioning in Beirut before the blast was far from perfect it partly created the conditions well it created the conditions are actually what happens and then they collapse afterwards so this challenge of the operating environments that was pre-blast far from perfect and dysfunctional I mean that should never be forgotten the blast is not point zero the blast is just a moment in this in a crisis that was happening already for quite for quite a while and and and so the being able to craft a response that takes takes into account that pre-crisis a pre-blast condition I think is important although exactly we when we talked I talked to Serge I mean his point is important you have to deal with government with whatever government or governance you have in place you cannot ignore it so I think that's his point for me was very important again in a way to finding maybe this is an opportunity to create and change the dynamics a bit change the dynamics between communities and government the position of private sector so it is a moment to kind of reshape the power dynamics but I think it has to be done involving whoever is in charge at that point in time because they have to be held accountable and they have to be part of the solution at that point the other thing that came to mind listening to some of the presentations is that and specifically in Lebanon again because it's an it's a pre-crisis asset this incredible capacity to innovate this incredible capacity to to be entrepreneurial it's a quality in assets of Lebanon and Lebanese people and how do you we know this is an asset how do you harness this and I fully agree it's by making sure that from the early days you're looking at this also from how can the private sector come in in a positive way moving away as quickly as you can from from the kind of charity uh need your charity first response you get because on day two you need to help people so you need to be able to supply things that people can afford that people don't have access to but quickly thinking this is exactly evolving to how do you build user assets of bottom-up creativity and entrepreneurship that exists in Lebanon so I was interested and happy to listen to the presentation on the on the lighting that was made thirdly I think also this issue of yes and that's where I'm happy that somebody from with the Haiti experience on the call and we talked about it with Serge you get this wave of NGOs all good intended but you're living in that street and you're getting five people knocking at your door asking what you need and then disappear there's something fundamentally wrong with that because that's not how society works that's not how you're going to help people and so in a way there is this bigger question how do you create a framework at whatever initiative that is coming up whatever energy you create that is part of the response you harness it in a way that ultimately becomes transformative that deals with immediate urgency but somehow becomes starts to add up does change what happened before so maybe a push to more energy efficient or more kind of greener technologies and this is what the designs should try to do how do you make somebody's transformative and I think that's the question I think we should also be discussing a bit more going forward but back to you thank you so much Philippe for this really deep observation this wave of NGOs I remember started arriving in 2011 with you know with the start of the Syrian crisis and this was one of the first moments in at least the past couple of decades where this was this giant wave of international organizations and international aid flooding and people knocking on doors they were not knocking on the doors of vulnerable Lebanese but they were knocking on you know the doors of shelters of where refugees were living and and I feel that has taken a complete backseat after the blast it's almost as if like one misery on top of the other and I'm I'm actually surprised to see that many of those same NGOs that were shown in Serge's map that were working on the you know for shelter of refugee refugees have actually shifted for to rebuild efforts after the port blast I think Michele who is the WHO technical coordinator who also contributed to the publication and was part of the process leading up to this event would like to say something go ahead Michele thank you Maureen well first of all thank you for the invitation and I think like I tried to follow up on what's like Philippe and also like Amina and someone else was was was saying before like I think you know we are just talking about the response we are just talking about the blast right but as was mentioned previously what happened before in Lebanon is decades of dysfunctional governments right so and that is you know it to be addressed in somehow plus all the COVID pandemic right the blast didn't appear in in the middle of of an easy let's say easy time for liberal for the world in itself and again I feel that including you know several UN agency and of course several and I am part of the UN agency like and several like non-profit organizations the lobbying organization are just running behind the response right so we will be always late in all of that if we are not trying to plan something because we know that something is happening and will happen like we know we don't know exactly when and where but we know that in certain countries and in certain regional area they are more vulnerable for certain type of hazards there is there are scientific map on that from the climate to the complex emergencies right and conflict so when we are doing this planning I think it's extremely important to first of all engage a different stakeholder but trying to avoid that is becoming a business because I'm very curious to follow up and understanding what will happen with the reconstruction in Beirut and in general like how the country will be started to get up from this nightmare no so of course that we have to involve the private sector because where there is the money but how and you know how we are going to control that there is not a misusing of funding in relation with the different stakeholders including international organizations right including international organizations not taking this out of the of the of the mass let's say including the donors because I think it's our and I hope you know we are trying to do it but of course everything is it's always low how we can are going to educate the donors to funding the right activities you know it's very easy to funding response because all donors want to have a picture with a crying baby I'm sorry to say that but it's the truth you know very interesting what's what's happening was a big that was always affected from flooding for many many many years but the time when Mozambique started to receive a huge amount of funding because of the flooding was actually after a photo taken from the helicopter like showing a woman a pregnant woman giving birth on the top of a tree right so now we are going to educate the donors also on the on the started to fund it also the preparedness plan and this preparedness plan of course have to be done together and in collaboration with the actually they have to be the main actors like local governments government regional government and of course community because if you don't involve the community the community will not react in a moment that there is a response because they they don't feel that it's their preparedness plan they don't know what they have to do you can not just educate you know the community after the response because it's too late you're ready you're in a work time so I think like connected also to the to what we are also like working a bit more like on the on the on the health on the health part and this also like the way I contributed a little bit on the on the on the publication I think it's it's very important that we are not like we are not trying to do and doing always the same error like let's try to build on the lesson and it's not just you know the same phrase that we always say you know my Italian sector right but really like we have the experience and we have the possibility to do that now you know like the pandemic could be of course it's a disaster but it could be a real possibility to make change and what's happening in Beirut with the blast it is a possibility to rebuild the city in a more equal way and I think this also that is very important because yeah we're talking about the reconstruction but who will loan the land on that you know I will be the reconstruction of this area who will be in charge of that would it be the regulation all of these are questions that will be addressed it over thank you Michele I hear a lot of commonalities between the different responses one being that the port last was not ground zero that we have to deal with decades of a country falling apart prior to that and you know the your point about instructing donors on what to spend their donations on is something really important because as you said the minute there is a very a crisis that gets a lot of attention this is where most of the funding goes immediately the problem is it's not a sustainable way and the longer the crisis goes the harder it is to sustain this kind of funding and what it does is the danger of that is that it puts it puts certain communities who are vulnerable ahead of other communities who are vulnerable yeah we can we can talk about that for for hours but like thank you for your you know like positive hope that we you know this is a moment for change be it's through you know what we learned from the pandemic or through this port blast or through these different efforts or it is a definitely a moment for change and this is why we're trying to keep the conversation alive especially being from afar it's important to you know it's one way for us to stay engaged I see that Sarge has a question also a contribution and after that we're going to move to the second question thank you thank you Maureen I would react on two points very quickly the first is about that's this model of kind of now recovery reconstruction is created generated gaps and I'll give a sample which is quite caricatural just to make things tangible so you have sometimes some of the NGOs because this also answers the question about how people reacted and what were according to their expectation and what are their reactions so sometimes some NGOs really worked in a very comprehensive way and they really answered kind of they were capable of adapting to the needs some came with some some very specific entry points and you ended up and this is a caricature definitely don't take it necessarily as such so for example somebody is kind of rehabilitating windows some other doors so you end up with some apartments that are kind of well rehabilitated but the stairs that leads to those apartment is left aside and it's not rehabilitated so we ended up facing sometimes situations again this is really a caricature but sometimes we found gaps and those gaps due to the severe economic conditions inhabitants were not able kind of to fill the gaps themselves and the state not intervening so he's not filling those gaps neither okay so you can imagine the level of struck frustration of people in those neighborhoods that they want to come back okay even though they're facing trauma some of them didn't come back due to the trauma so they want to come back but nevertheless they're not capable of going back another thing just to to to to to to extend what Felipe was was saying and I and I agree totally with what you are saying but I would say that solider experience learned us that even if the private sector is present and strong and willing and aware if the public sector is absent the reconstruction will never happen completely to the benefit of the inhabitants and population and we we've gone through this so Michele yes you're completely right we should learn from those experiences and this is why from the beginning we're saying we cannot do without the state they need to assume their responsibilities not only for the later phase but because the model of reconstruction itself won't be fair won't be just won't take into consideration what are their needs and and we we've been through this process before and unfortunately we're in a way re reproducing that and especially now on the port I'm very much afraid that the model of reconstruction if it happens now within the very weak model of governance that we have within this very high level of vulnerability that we're facing we might end up again with a model that is not at all in favor of the inhabitants and the long and sustainable development of those areas thank you thank you everyone I think somehow your answers just handled our second and third questions so we discussed a lot about the relationship of resident to resident and to the state and search at the end like it is important to have the state involved so we're going to skip to the fourth question since we touched on these topics and if you feel like elaborating anyone more on these topics please go ahead as a relatively newly formed nation state with limited resources a dysfunctional political system and under constant threats from opposing regional regimes and ideologies Lebanon has been surviving on foreign aid to sustain itself which has put the country and its people at the mercy of foreign will and sometimes at direct and indirect foreign intervention do you think these localized projects can plug into into a wider regional project that protects the interests of Lebanese residents and neighboring communities so I think maybe Elias can jump in as well Yara maybe you can talk about the experiences and how to connect with Haiti and other areas worldwide and try to create alliances and everyone else is welcome to okay yeah I can start so one word that comes up in multiple of the questions is the interests you know the public's interests the interests of Lebanese residents etc we think that you know doing politics is defining what these interests are so think about any sectoral measure that that you might take today to try to fix things any such measure would kind of invariably help some people more than others so for example measures that you would take in education might favor the public education sector and heard the interests of the private education set sector which in turn hurts the interests of kind of certain you know the certain churches certain etc and so on and so forth and so as part of political work we should first define what these interests are and that of course is there's no kind of right or wrong or you know systematic methodic answer to get there that is where political choices what we think matters more as part of our political beliefs comes into play and so without such a definition you know we risk of you know falling into a pitfall of thinking that interests are very well defined trying to do something towards that and then finding out that you know actually we cannot satisfy all of the basic needs of everyone simultaneously and thus we've kind of prioritized one group over the other one region over the other etc just for the sake of practical feasibility and so whenever the word public's interest or interest of Lebanese comes into play I urge everyone to think of that as a political question there's no right or wrong answer you have to determine what your choices are as for plugging into a wider regional project there's you know just to me there's two aspects to that number one is again the time aspect so we shouldn't be hoping for any kind of regional arrangement that's going to just come and be perfectly suitable in fact our history speaks to the complete opposite typically these arrangements come at the expense of the Lebanese you know with the one of the major ones being the post civil war one which was an agreement between you know the US, Saudi Arabia, Syria and so on which was of course really bad for Lebanon in many ways and so were other arrangements and even today's government is one regional arrangement with France as a main player and Iran and so on and so forth so why should we count on such arrangements when we are not on that table in any shape or form so we need to get on that table to get on that table you need to get in you know in power and to do so you need to grow in strength and influence so that you can get there and only then can we think of these interests which we've at that point defined clearly and the interest of external and foreign powers and see where Lebanon could plug in which ways and obviously from the perspective of you know protecting our interests of both citizens and residents and last back to the time aspect you know we are literally in a battle at this moment between kind of a new cabinet with lots of momentum and force whose literal document in the cabinet formation process asks that you know says that it will pursue recent expats to their countries and try to figure out how they can get back remittances and capital from them so the project is literally to get a couple hundred thousand people out in the next year or two so that there's more dollar inflow that is simply the plan that is it and during this time the banks will be refloated in a certain way that protects bank owners interests and we have a massive campaign and citizens in a state at the moment on that front which actually concerns the order of engineers and architects and other syndicates whose you know mandatory savings have been essentially slashed away and and effectively stolen by bank owners who've made tons of profits and at the expense of all these workers and their families so time again comes into play and we can't really afford to wait for anything for it so on the on a different kind of perspective from my own experience like Haiti or also different African countries I work in I mean the most successful initiatives when it came to like access to solar energy but also I've worked with on on education on different initiatives there was always the the local initiative and really this bottom up those bottom up solutions that from at least what I saw were the most successful and I think the way we should look at foreign aid and at donors and also you know every single donor they also have their own interests I mean I've worked with several different government and each one have their different you know personal interests or or constraints or but the way we should look at them is there are many you know donors that are willing to help the private sector and private sector initiative where they see that there is really sustainability employment like different really kind of social impact and you know measures indicators so I think what's really important and I've seen I've seen that in Lebanon as well I worked on a project where we're trying to show that the company that private sector company was also was hiring maintaining jobs were doing you know all those different steps to for climate change for you know different social positive impact and I think the way we should look at it is really push those local initiatives and help trying to create those linkages between like donors programs and the private sector and see and really see how they can work together and that's how I see we can bring you know it's more kind of a bottom-up solution in some programs so yes so I think I think that should be part of the solution and we should look at foreign aid and donor aid as really complementary it could be technical assistance it could be grant funding it could be debt funding I mean there are different types of aid available out there that's kind of more long term and obviously the way to track it and to make sure it's sustainable or if you see like monitoring evaluation of these type of initiatives which are key and but yeah Serge you have your hand yeah yes actually I would like maybe to to answer to Marie-Jo Basile so her question was how can we as individuals help the public sector get stronger this is very difficult I don't know as individuals I don't know how I can answer that concerning the individuals but I can talk about one of the very good experiences that happened are still happening and we can kind of start extracting some some lessons learned from it is the heritage reconstruction for example in that in that case international funding institutions agencies countries and so on even UNESCO kind of didn't bypass the director general of antiquities within the ministry of culture who is in charge kind of of these heritage buildings they provided funds for technical assistance in parallel to the reconstruction process and efforts and always required and still do now we're working on a project with them on that they always require that everything goes through the administration and that administration is the one in charge so by doing so they are reinforcing the role and they are helping us kind of to play this to I mean to play the game through these rules which is keep reinforcing the institutions we as individuals I can imagine that this is maybe a political answer now maybe Elias would like to to to rebounce on that but definitely there's need to change politically things to to to empower us as individuals and to be able maybe to change the whole system but this is another another thing I don't know Marijou if I answered your your question I just want to jump in for a second to react to what Yara just talked about about the local initiatives and also what you talked about Serge I think what we did in the studio was to try to focus on local initiatives we looked at several scales of work like this this conversation is really on a political policy level but the studio looked at how one could empower neighborhood organizations so that they could now instead of the NGOs or link with the NGOs or link with the donors they could implement small projects which would essentially build up the community so I really resonate with that or we really resonate with what you're talking about several years ago in Cuba they were about to fund a pan-american games what the government did was essentially to give these local individuals or neighborhood organizations technical help to build the housing for the games and then once the games were over those buildings or those housing types were then given back to those individuals so there was a scale of actually getting government help technical help getting NGOs involved and eventually getting it down to the to the community so I totally think that if there's more emphasis on you know of course the government is very very important and they have to be in sync with this kind of thinking of getting local community agencies giving them agency you could get a lot more growth and that's what I think a lot of our students try to do in the report okay I think we're running over time any final comments before we end the discussion I know there's no there's no straight line here it's it's on so many levels on so many scales in so many different ways from so many different places and that's what makes it really rich but also disheartening that it's that so that Lebanon is suffering so much at the moment but yeah to Iad's point we can talk about this for hours of course but do you have any like closing comments or final thoughts you'd like to share with everyone before we end I think that there are I mean only kind of the positive note here I think as as one of us mentioned I think Lebanese people are come are very innovative they're very like they always come up with solution I mean whoever's been to Lebanon know that there's always a solution and and I feel that the diaspora is also very involved any Lebanese living outside Lebanon will still somehow have a link with Lebanon so I think if there is a way to leverage that and to use you know the Lebanese you know brain and and and you know to collectively kind of find a way to work together even with the diaspora I'm sure there's there must be a solution thank you Yala Amina do you have I thought you thought you wanted to say something yeah and this has been very very interesting conversation and I think a takeaway from you know all of these lessons learned is that at least we have you know built a lot of experience learning capacity knowledge yeah from all of these events thank you yeah I think what's important and why do we keep doing these events is to bring people from different disciplines and backgrounds to have a conversation because as like architects and designers we always think we have the answers but we don't have the answers we really need to engage with other disciplines politicians activists ecologists economists like all of these disciplines and I really encourage all the students and architects to keep the conversation happening like if we really want to make a change like we need to engage with other disciplines go for it mechanic yeah I just wanted to first of all like thank you for the invitation because I was living a bit in in Liberals it's always a great pleasure to to be involved when talking about the country and you know just what if I can give a suggestion that it's actually like also what we are doing now with this this new the like WHO network I've we at least I'm finding that it's much easier to change big institutions and when we when you are talking and starting from the technical perspective so that these actually change a lot the life of the people that is should be our main point right I don't know if I was working a lot like in the Palestinian camp like in in Beirut for example like there are a lot of technical modification that you can do it electricity water ventilation already if you tackle these three you improve the life of people with huge huge impact and of course when you are talking about small technical initiative basically it's much more easy because you are not under the radar to be blocked when you just started to take them it can be parallel but if you started to take the discussion as much higher level into a political and policy level is of course a much much longer like way to go that have to be done but we cannot wait for that to improve the life of people so I think it's this everything like like one of my like suggestions like for for for for some for the some of you that they are like in the limo of the diaspora or yeah and I think like this is what we are you know trying to do with and it's very interesting because for example everyone want to collaborate with us because we are the technical people right and there is not any more political problems within the department different UN agencies different like ministry all over the world because we are giving technical support so I think it could be two parallel things one talking about policy and political decision the other things you are going into really the almost the life saving that is not response because it's the development of our country and development of economy because for example I hear some of you talking about solar power or clean energy this is stay with the people for for long long time and if you capacity build the people to basically manage this or to deal with that it can become a business for them for them so it's not just giving them something over thank you so much Michele for that final comment it's actually a great wrap up which represents many of our panelists here you know we have Manal working on you know lighting and it's this very technical way of doing activist work Amina through impact Lebanon as well you are working in humanitarian situations and trying to bring lessons learned from different places self working on the you know regional level of you know master planning and rethinking how to connect neighborhoods together and Elias you know probably hovering and thinking more of you know that policy political level which is going to definitely take much more time and I agree with your comment the technical stuff can really help people you know better people's lives very quickly but of course without the right policies in place all of that is all of these technical solutions are very futile and they can disappear overnight if there's nothing really to you know like a solid policy behind it to back it up and that was really where the question for this event started like how do we turn these short term you know ad hoc initiatives and these the efforts of you know brilliant people like yourselves who are working from different parts of the world to just help in any way you can and putting your expertise in any way you can to help at any level and you know having in mind that actually it's it's very complex it will take time but we're seeing some progress in Lebanon I would say we've never stopped seeing progress we've always just stood up and kept walking and I love this about my country and I love this about your work and how it's you know being showcased here and we would be very happy to continue this conversation and future events and the future collaborations please stay connected and I'm sure this event will provide exposure of your work to other people around the world who may end up connecting with you or reaching out to us to connect with you and we would love to you know keep this network growing thank you all for joining us Iyad and I and the collective thank you for Dean Amal Andra was for making the time to be here thank you for professor Richard and professor Victor for giving us the time and space and the you know the first bump up through their studio and you know pushing this further to the publication and engaging more stakeholders and I know it's very late in Lebanon right now so thank you again everyone and good night