Local Authorities & Decentralization

As a firm supporter of democracy, the Rene Moawad Foundation believes in the importance of empowering all citizens to enact meaningful change in their own communities. In accordance with this, RMF has chosen to focus a large portion of our time and effort towards building the capacity of and empowering Local Authorities across Lebanon to implement projects and measures that they know will be beneficial to their own communities. In order to achieve this goal we have been engaged in:

• Capacity building for municipalities
• Establishing local development committees
• Conducting awareness raising sessions on relevant topics
• Providing financial sub-grants to deserving entities to implement projects
• Assisting with business and administrative management in municipality councils

Our goals for these initiatives are that they are sustainable, and that the knowledge becomes institutionalized in these local authority structures, so that future generations continue to benefit from the learning and knowledge that is transmitted. RMF also believes that these types of initiatives have immense power to positively influence the local community in any number of sectors, including agriculture, economy, health, and education. This is one of the factors that helps make these types of initiatives extremely attractive and important to RMF, and to many large international donors as well.
RMF works primarily through donor-funded projects in this sector.