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Photo Essay – Empowering Lebanon's youth
Empowering women and embracing sustainability: Mavia Bakery is transforming Beirut's Culinary Scene
5 June 2024
Social entrepreneurs in Lebanon successfully grew their businesses through EMDAD, an ILO PROSPECTS-led initiative that offered financial support, personalized coaching, technical training, and networking opportunities, boosting their community and economic growth. Learn how Mavia Bakery in Gemmayze, Beirut, champions sustainability and female empowerment. Led by Kinda Darwish, the bakery employs women from different backgrounds, offering them professional culinary opportunities.
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Led by women, Mavia Bakery champions diversity and inclusion by providing employment opportunities to female chefs from marginalized backgrounds. The bakery offers a diverse range of products, including bread, desserts, brunch from Tuesday to Saturday, Friday night pizza, custom cakes for special occasions, and locally produced flour and products such as olive oil.
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“We prioritize empowering women in the workplace by offering them opportunities in a professional kitchen environment,” Darwish says. “Given that most kitchens predominantly employ male chefs, we aim to create avenues for passionate women to pursue culinary careers. Also, we equip them with valuable skills that could be leveraged not only within our bakery, but also in future endeavours, enabling them to secure stable and rewarding employment.”
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“Our second goal centres on prioritizing local ingredients, particularly using locally cultivated wheat,” Darwish says. “We cultivate wheat in the Bekaa Valley, focusing on ancient, native, and heirloom grains historically grown in the region encompassing Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. These grains grow in our soil without needing pesticides or chemicals, presenting a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to commodity white flour. The latter is not only unhealthy and bleached but also costly and detrimental to the environment due to its importation.”
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“Our aim is to establish a circular system, which includes operating a stone mill in the Bekaa Valley,” she says. “Stone milling is a superior method compared to industrial hard milling, which often strips the wheat of its nutritional value through excessive processing. “Stone milling preserves the integrity of the grain, retaining valuable nutrients that the body can absorb more effectively. This results in whole-grain flour that offers superior nutritional benefits.”
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“Our introduction to EMDAD came through recommendations from clients, leading to my first grant application experience,” Darwish says. “EMDAD’s support has been transformative for the bakery, especially during a challenging period where high expenses and a sense of isolation were significant hurdles.
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“EMDAD’s assistance provided us with a significant boost, enabling us to hire three additional team members,” Darwish says. “They offered precious training sessions covering social media, marketing strategies, and legal and financial aspects. This helped the formal registration of our company and enabled us to collaborate with legal and financial professionals, such as a lawyer and accountant. The rebranding efforts, space renovations, and acquisition of new equipment such as ovens, fridges, plates, and other essentials were made possible through careful budget allocation and EMDAD’s support.”
About EMDAD
Young entrepreneurs from 18 social and solidarity economy entities (SSEs) managed to successfully launch and scale up their businesses in Lebanon, expanding their activities while improving the lives of their communities through EMDAD (Arabic for support), a one-year ILO Prospects-led initiative, supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Entrepreneurs, start-ups, micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with social impact projects were selected through a country-wide application call in April 2023. Shortlisted entrepreneurs who passed this first step followed through the following pitching process a few months later. Here, they had the chance to describe their projects, goals and ways the support received would help them thrive and make a difference across their communities.
Through EMDAD, select projects received up to 20,000USD in the form of grants along with six months of personalized coaching sessions, technical training, and access to networking events. This eventually equipped them with the required tools and support to succeed. The full initiative ended in March 2024.
One of EMDAD’s key objective has been supporting the creation and growth of social enterprises to generate decent and tangible employment opportunities, addressing the urgent socio-economic needs the country is facing amid its ongoing multi-level crisis.
Fostering social cohesion and inclusivity was another crucial element at the core of the initiative. Engaging vulnerable Lebanese host communities and Syrian refugees through employment opportunities within their shared society proved to be a valuable step in improving individual and the community’s livelihoods.
EMDAD was implemented in collaboration with makesense Lebanon, Cooperazione per lo Sviluppo (COSV) and Research and Professional Services for the MENA Region (RPS).
Throughout the project, we documented the work of the select SSEs across Lebanon, capturing the work of several of the initiatives we supported, whose insights into their journey and impact you will find below.