Since spring 2017, Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) students have been actively involved in the first-ever Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF)-organized “Lebanese Student Entrepreneurship” project (Développement de l’Entrepreneuriat Etudiant au Liban, DEEL), headed by AUF Regional Director Hervé Sabourin. Thirteen universities, in addition to research and innovation centers, partook in this project.
The AUF organized a national competition among university students to determine the best “Student Entrepreneurial Proposal.” Preliminary selections at the university level took place back in January 2018, the competition’s official launch date. As a result, each university was requested to be represented at the national level by one team only. This selection was held on June 2, 2018, at the AUF offices.
An NDU team composed of three students in the Faculty of Business Administration and Economic (FBAE), along with their advisor Dr. Talie Kassamany, represented the University. The students were:
- Hanine Salloum, Banking and Finance (Shouf Campus);
- Bahaa el-Hassanieh, Financial Engineering (Shouf Campus); and
- Charbel Khoury, Economics (Zouk Campus).
The team designed an application, which they called Hand 2 Hand, whose purpose was to deliver homemade products to online customers. This application is intended to help people living in rural areas to benefit from their manual artisanship, in addition to contributing to the development of those remote regions.
The NDU team was selected among the winners and offered a trip to France to spend three weeks developing their entrepreneurship skills.
On Tuesday, June 12, the AUF held a press conference at its offices in Beirut to announce the competition results.