CAROLINE BAZZI

Beirut- The Lebanese general election will be held on May 15, 2022. Dr. Josephine Zgheib founded the Beity Association in Lebanon in 2004 after a two years trip touring 45 countries. She runs for the parliamentary elections now. She wants to represent the Lebanese from north to south.

Stating that she returned to Lebanon after a two years trip touring 45 countries, Josephine Zgheib said, “After I returned to Lebanon, I wanted to create a space for the people from different countries to come together. I founded the Beity Association and Auberge Beity to be a home for everyone. Its aim is to promote social, economic, and culturally sustainable development in Lebanon through equality, direct services, enhancing the capacities of youth and women, and encouraging volunteer work. Therefore, women from Tunisia, Jordan, Syria, and Morocco contributed to the foundation of the association. We worked to found the Beity Association in these countries, too. However, the murder of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri in 2005 stopped us. And then, we faced many challenges in 2006 due to the 2006 Lebanon War. For these reasons, we decided to found our association based only in Lebanon.”

“Our aim is to empower women’s economy”

Josephine Zgheib spoke about the aims of the association as follows:

“We aim to empower young men and women economically. We have organized university preparation courses for them. We have also held training courses and seminars to provide job opportunities for them and to give information to women about their rights. We support women’s participation in decision-making positions.”

Josephine Zgheib has been a board member of the city council of Kfardebian since 2010. She has developed and implemented environmental and ecotourism programs and launched a women’s development prototype bureau in her city and now expanded it to 12 bureaus across Lebanon. “My aim was first to raise awareness of the public against environmental degradation because there was an attack on nature since 2008. But then, I realized that the municipality has a fundamental role in preventing this attack. For this reason, I decided to wage a political struggle in 2010 with a group of people who wanted to protect the natural resources in Kfardebian. We ran for the city council and won. We served as the members of the city council until 2016 and won the trust of our people.”

They developed many projects

Josephine Zgheib and her team developed many projects as the city council members. “We opened the Women's Development Office and a gym and formed sports committees. We held international festivals. We also conducted many regional development projects,” she said.

She runs in the general election

Josephine Zgheib was a parliamentary candidate for Lebanon's 2018 election but she wasn’t lucky and couldn’t enter the parliament. She is now a parliamentary candidate from Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate for the general election to be held on May 15, 2022. She spoke about the difference between the 2018 elections and today’s elections. “The atmosphere in 2018 was different from today’s atmosphere. The people had hope and believed that the politicians would give them their rights although we warned them against a possible economic crisis. We told them the price of a bundle of bread would exceed 10 thousand pounds, but no one believed us. In 2018, the citizens began to realize that there was an alternative against the political authority. Then, the citizens took to the streets to protest on October 17, 2019, known as the October Revolution. On August 4, 2020, the port explosion took place in Beirut and more than 200 people were killed, 6,500 injured in the explosion. The people don’t trust the political authority anymore. For this reason, we decided to run for the election with a national coalition. We say that the change is near,” she said.

Addressing the Lebanese people, Josephine Zgheib said, “I stand by you. Your dignity has been humiliated for 40 years; your money has been stolen in banks. Your dignity is important to Lebanon; you will play a key role on May 15, 2022, in order to build our country together. I will represent all Lebanese.”