We’re going through very rough times in Lebanon, unemployment and poverty are on the rise and more and more families are struggling to make ends meet or even putting food on the table. With Christmas around the corner, the majority of Lebanese are not feeling very festive and despite getting a new PM assigned today, the situation is gloomy and extremely worrisome.

Despite all that, we’ve been seeing so many beautiful initiatives to help out families in need and I’ve been trying to promote snd support as many campaigns as possible in the past two months. Last week, I reached out to our friends at Le Charcutier to see if we can work on sending packages with basic food ingredients to needy families and they were more than willing to help.

The reason I chose Le Charcutier is because I’m a loyal customer and it is a 100% Lebanese owned family business with no external investors, no support from any local or international organizations, and not affiliated with any political figure or party whatsoever. More importantly, they’re one of the biggest employers in Lebanon, they haven’t reduced salaries for any of their employees or downsized and they’re still growing & investing in Lebanon despite the difficult conditions. I believe this is a crucial time to support local businesses as they are the backbone of our economy and hopefully this will be the start of many collaborations to come.

I’ve already compiled a list of NGOs that are helping needy families. The idea is to get in touch with as many as possible and prepare parcels (We’re aiming for 100 parcels!) based on their needs that they can pick up from the nearest Le Charcutier branch. I know this is not much, but I hope it will help spread some joy and hope in this festive season.