Foundation

AEP was founded in 1984 by a group of businessmen, bankers and social specialists.

Because of the war, banks had reduced their credits and could not get involved in risky projects. Thus, a whole category of population - the ones who did not get involved in war-related activities – needed a financial support to realize or develop survival micro-enterprises.

The AEP was founded, in order to fund – even partially – the credit needs of this new category of potential poor, by adding to the credit a human and technical follow-up.

The basic principle of this new association was to favor the spirit of “non assistance”, by giving access to credit to each “Borrower-entrepeneur”according to his needs and possibilities.

In spite of all the difficulties, different Committees and voluntary regional teams have marvelously succeeded in incarnating and developing this spirit.

Intuitions and options of the AEP:

The AEP was established after certain basic intuitions and options motivated by requirements of the Lebanese conditions. In Lebanon, due to the fact that banking system includes only commercial expenditures, is a cause for exclusion of important sections of the population. These sections suffer from injustice that does not face any opposition, and it has even become an accepted real fact. In the aim of promoting popular development banks and cooperatives, besides the flourishing commercial banks in Lebanon, the AEP has constituted a fund of loans, limited for sure, to which have access a number of beneficiaries.

Thus, ones of the basic intuitions are: 

• The awareness of the economic dimension in the promotion of the autonomy of persons, families and groups.

• The convictions that those categories can create independent enterprises contributing to the full development of human being.

• The replacement of assistance by economic rehabilitation has been the basic struggle of the AEP. This was accompanied by strict regulations with the loan beneficiaries, so that they do not beg any treatment of assisted, but instead take all their responsibility of ordinary beginners.

The options of the AEP were thus motivated by these intuitions and are:

• The manner in which money was placed to serve human potentials: the association chose to place its money in a commercial bank and to ask it to execute the transactions related to loans and separated social work (accompanying and following up the project of the borrowers) from the financial transactions that the bank employees take care if with the required technology.

• The reconsideration of the payment program by putting down a new schedule for the payments.

• The collect of facilitated interests from the borrowers.

• To ensure collaterals before consenting to offer loans and to register them at a notary public whenever needed.  The reasons are to make the relationship between the Association and the borrowers the closest possible to an ordinary banking system.

Here, two options were added: Humanizing the collaterals and resorting to cooperation between the members of one family on the hand and the borrowers on the other hand.

• To put clear conditions and priorities for the approval of offering loans.

• To give priority to projects in which several borrowers collaborate.