What?! One month and no blog post!

That’s right, now stop crying and take the following quiz:

We will do this like a standardized test-

“An FM Scout drives….”

A) The closer vehicle B) The farther vehicle C) Both vehicles D) Neither vehicle
…  If you answered A you are correct!  That’s right I get around on those 60 pounds full of testosterone and speed.  Turns out one of the most important lessons Beirut had to teach me was on the streets.  I have only been hit twice, I haven’t hit anyone, and it hasn’t been stolen الحمد الله

The last week has been full of action.  I took a trip to a conference for young leaders in Zurich, Switzerland, One Young World and visited regional partners in Jordan.  Additionally, I have been meeting with a number of local Social Entrepreneurs (most of them don’t have websites, sorry), and we are about to put out a ‘call for applications’ for VilCap Beirut.

I am going to break from my past format, because there is really no way to give you a concise update whilst including EVERY meeting.

Here are a few highlights:

My fiance and I had one of our most delicious meals yet at Tawlet!  Tawlet means “table” in Arabic, and is an off shoot of Souk El Tayeb Lebanon’s first farmers market.  Souk El Tayeb translates to “the delicious market.”

Tawlet is one of the most interesting restaurants I have ever been to.  They serve lunch every day that is cooked by a different women from various parts of Lebanon.  In all they have over 15 women that come and cook on a rotating basis.  This is a fantastic model in so many ways.  Many of these women typically would not have any other source of personal income.  In addition to their daily wage (which is far above the going market wage rate, if they had been able to find employment elsewhere), there is a measure of prestige that goes along with traveling to the ‘big city’ to cook at a fine restaurant twice a month.  Souk El-Tayeb has a number of for profit initiatives, of which Tawlet is one.  They have a couple concepts up their sleave that could be highly scalable, and I am looking forward to future talks with them…

In Amman I was able to meet with the Aramex’s Entrepreneurial Support Unit, Ruuwad, and the King Abdullah II Fund for Development.

Aramex founder Fadi Ghandour has a strong belief in entrepreneurship.  He also happens to be the major backer of Ruuwad, and group that focus on community development in the lowest of income areas in Jordan.  Like many individuals around here where the start up and venture investing industry is so young, many individuals in the Aramex office wear the investment analyst, mentor, and even entrepreneur hat simultaneously.  For in stance, the MENA Venture Fund is run out of the Aramex office as well.

The KAFD is going to be a fantastic recruiting and marketing partner.  They have been recruiting and mentoring fellows for three years now, and have had two complete classes.  A lot of there fellow have received a lot of tips on how to start there business and are working in the ‘seed stage sweet spot,’ where what they really need to do is scale.  This is fantastic because as participants in VilCap they will get a chance to focus on how to take on investment and do just that, scale.  One of KAFD’s most successful entrepreneurs/enterprises has been Souk Tel.  And if you just caught that the word “souk” appeared half a page up, you may have a future in linguistics.  Souk Tel is an online marketplace for connecting potential employees to jobs, particularly in Palestine.  You can read more about them on their website- I hope to be able to meet the founders at some point.

Thank you for reading, and I will do my best to stick with bi-monthly updates from now on.