
Screenshot of the interactive map of NGOs in Lebanon
“We couldn't stand idly by while Lebanon suffers,” said Jad Achhab and Anthony Chrabieh, two Lebanese in their thirties who, from their home in Paris, have designed an interactive map of U.N.-listed NGOs in Lebanon.
The map includes links to each NGO's donation page. This initiative was launched by the two HEC Paris business school alumni shortly after the escalation of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon on Sept. 23, in the ongoing war of attrition between Israel and Hezbollah that began in October 2023.
Witnessing the Lebanese diaspora struggle to find ways to help, the two friends saw numerous donation links for various NGOs appearing on social media. This sparked their idea to centralize these links on a single website. They then envisioned an interactive map as an educational and user-friendly tool to list all the organizations helping those in Lebanon, including the more than 875,000 people internally displaced by the war, according to the latest estimates of the International Organization for Migration.
A Didactic approach
For reliability, the website features charities listed by the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has been coordinating emergency responses since 1991. The data was updated on Oct. 1, two days after Israel officially launched its ground offensive in Lebanon.
The U.N. organization, in the “Lebanese crisis” section of the website, stresses the importance of knowing where humanitarian organizations are working and what actions they are taking.
To guarantee donations reach Lebanon, the interactive map features 45 organizations from the OCHA list that operate solely within the country. Users can interact with the map in two ways: First, they can choose a specific humanitarian action (e.g., child protection, food or education) to view the districts where corresponding NGOs are active.
Alternatively, they can select one of Lebanon's 25 districts to see a list of all NGOs providing aid in that area. The color intensity of each district reflects the number of organizations working there.
Aid to NGOs is vital in Lebanon, not only to help those in need but also to bypass the endemic corruption plaguing the country's government. This mistrust of authorities stems from the ongoing 2019 economic and financial crisis. Distrust in the Lebanese government runs so deep that the international community has in some cases refused to let aid flow through official channels, echoing the approach taken after the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion. At the Oct. 24 Paris conference, where substantial aid was pledged to Lebanon, it was stipulated that funds would bypass the government.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient Le-Jour.