Lebanon

One day you think you’ll have a free week between your internship and the start of your second and last year of grad school, and the next day you find out that you’re going to Lebanon.

I’m going to Lebanon. Today. I will be co-facilitating a workshop on lending to early stage start-ups. The audience is a non-profit financer. I’m not getting paid for the work. It’s volunteering, but a US-based organization that partners with non-profits in Lebanon is paying for my expenses to get over to Lebanon and deliver the workshop. My friend in DC, Amanda, found the opportunity (or it found her), and she invited me to join her.

I didn’t immediately jump on the opportunity. I’m not a big fan of short-term volunteerism, and it was going to be a lot of work to prepare for the workshop (indeed it has been, and Amanda has done the bulk of the work so far). However, I wanted to help Amanda, so I agreed to join her for the workshop. I also hope that one day when I tell people that I’m going to Lebanon they won’t say, “wow,” and have war and terrorism come to their mind. When they day comes, it will be great for me to already have friendly acquaintances in the country.

In the meantime, if you know my grandmother, please don’t tell her I’m going to Lebanon. She would be very unhappy with me.

What was originally slated to be a five day workshop had to be pared down to a four day workshop. Tuesday, August 15 is a national holiday in Lebanon. Wondering what the holiday is? Take a guess. We’ll be covering a number of topics, such as:

• Importance of entrepreneurship and innovation
• Customer journey
• Business plan analysis
• Business coaching
• Creating a loan application
• Customer interviews
• Credit risk
• Underwriting

In addition to Tuesday off, I will also have next Saturday free, before I have to head back to NC for the start of class on eclipse day.

Stay tuned for updates while I am in Lebanon, or at the very least when I get back from the Paris of the Middle East.