Yusr Sabra is part of a group of 18 Lebanese women entrepreneurs who have been harnessing the opportunities of an economic empowerment programme to keep innovating in the midst of Lebanon’s crisis. Through grants from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the support of the EU-funded Women Economic Empowerment for Lebanon project (WEEL), her logistics and services business -Wakilni- is thriving.
Since the onset of the national crisis almost four years ago, Yusr Sabra has been feeling anxious “all the time”. “After the COVID-19 pandemic, the explosion and the earthquake, I am always on my toes, asking myself ‘what is going to happen next?!’.”
And who could blame her? According to the World Bank, Lebanon’s economic crisis was deemed “one of the three most severe crises to occur anywhere since the mid-19th century”. After 25 years as an upper-middle-income economy, beleaguered Lebanon dramatically dropped to the ranks of a lower-middle-income nation in 2022.
Nevertheless, the energetic young mother, whose name translates to “do things with ease”, still keeps a bright smile and a lot of energy, running around and checking on her 190 employees across the different storage units of Wakilni… more
