Manifesto
We were scattered, and we did well.
For nine decades the Lebanese have left. Some left for opportunity, most left for reasons they did not choose. They arrived in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, in Abidjan and Dakar, in Detroit and Sydney and Paris, and they built. Today there are more people of Lebanese origin outside Lebanon than inside it. Perhaps twice as many, perhaps more. They run companies, hospitals, ministries, universities and banks on six continents.
This is usually recited as a source of pride. We would rather treat it as an unused asset.
And we stayed scattered.
A network that does not know itself is not a network. It is a coincidence. A Lebanese engineer in Calgary and a Lebanese engineer in Kuala Lumpur have more in common professionally than either has with most of their colleagues, and neither will ever learn the other exists. Multiply that by several million and you have the exact shape of what we have wasted.
What we send home, and what we do not.
In 2024 Lebanon received roughly 5.8 billion dollars in remittances, close to eighteen percent of the economy, and in recent years as much as a third of it. The diaspora is, by a wide margin, the country's largest external support.
Almost all of it arrives as money sent from one person to their family. Almost none of it arrives as judgement, governance, market access, or institutional expertise, though the diaspora holds more of those than it holds cash. There has never been a vehicle built to carry them. That is the omission this institution was founded to correct.
What we ask of you.
Dues, which are published and modest, and which pay for the institution rather than for anyone's ambitions. Your name on the charter. Discretion about what is said on the floor.
And one thing more, which matters more than the others: that you be useful to another member at least once a year. Answer a request. Make an introduction. Sit with someone thirty years younger. We keep a record of it, not to rank anyone, but because an institution built on generosity should be able to see where the generosity comes from.
Ahla w sahla.