Ruwwad al-Tanmeya

Ruwwad Al-Tanmeya (“Pioneers of Development”) is a non-profit community development organisation that works with disenfranchised communities in North Lebanon, Tripoli, where Ruwwad’s only office in Lebanon opened in 2012.

Ruwwad is the brainchild of the Jordanian businessman and founder of Aramex International, Fadi Ghandour. In 2005, Fadi Ghandour mobilised employees and brought together a group of likeminded businessmen to develop a strategy to play a bigger role in community development. The founders of Ruwwad’s aim is to benefit from entrepreneurship, resources and skills to serve the community and to help tackle inequities that pervade the Arab world. They especially seek to engage youth all around the world in this process.

Ruwwad established its first office in Amman, Jordan in 2005. In 2011 it has expanded first to Palestine and in 2012 to Egypt and Lebanon. It has since then been operating through a network of partnerships with civil society and governmental agencies.

Mission and Activities

The mission of Ruwwad Al-Tanmeya is to strengthen initiatives and address problems prioritised by members of deprived communities through education, youth volunteering, and grassroots campaigns. Core values of this mission are to embrace pluralism and to respect diversity as well as to promote equity.

In 2012, the Ruwwad community center in the areas of Jabal Mohsen and Bab El-Tebbaneh in the north of Tripoli was established. In the midst of the struggle of these two poverty-stricken and marginalised neighbouring communities, and in spite of the sectarian and political conflict between them, Ruwwad managed to secure a building in the street that divides the two neighbourhoods. Activists began to do four hours of community service per week under the guidance of the Ruwwad team.The work is conducted mindfully considering the special circumstances that define the two communities while simultaneously aiming to reduce tensions and hostility.

Until 2018, the center enabled 191 youths, giving them access to education, enrichment programs and civic engagement opportunities. About 100 scholarships have been given out in this context. Ruwwad Lebanon has become a platform for change , peace-building and connecting youths and children across sectarian divides to engage in learning, community service and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Cooperation with forumZFD

Ruwwad and forumZFD are cooperating within the programme Community Mobilising of forumZFD in the project Future Together Now! II. The project aims to establish processes for social cohesion, joint decision-making and non-violent conflict transformation and participatory development within communities.

Therefore, Ruwwad and forumZFD are working together towards improving relationships between communities (Lebanese and non-Lebanese) and establishing inclusive structures for conflict transformation, community development and relationship building through community mobilising. Local community initiatives are established and reinforced by social actors in the conflicted area in order for them to take responsibility for and ownership of assessing and addressing their own needs and conflicts.