Rida Mawla, 34, is the co-founder of Beit-Beit, an initiative which fixes homes destroyed by the Beirut Blast on August 4.

“When the explosion happened, I was in Batroun. We didn’t feel a thing over there and I didn’t process the magnitude of the situation. But, when I got to Beirut, I was like “Fuck!”.

I have friends who needed to fix their homes that got destroyed during the blast. One of them, Mohamad, is an engineer and was fixing his own house. We realized we could use the collective expertise of our group of friends to actually fix other homes. We said : let us gather a bunch of engineers around Mohamad, because he is connected to engineers, Rayan, Ramzi and I will take care of the fundraising, accounting and finance. Rana and Caroline would take care of social media and communications.

This is how we started Beit-Beit, an initiative which fixes people’s homes. 

We launched a GoFundMe campaign but also started testing the model by paying out of our own pockets. Since Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh have a lot of people on the ground, we tried to focus on the peripheries such as Zkak El Blat, Karantina, Geitawi…these places weren’t getting many people to help them clean up at the beginning.

The way we identified homes is that one homeowner would refer us to his neighbor or friend and so on.

As soon as we walk into a home, we can tell if that person or family is able to fix their home or not, and we focus on those who can’t, by covering the entire cost of repairs. It doesn’t mean we are not helping those who can afford to fix their homes since, at the end of the day, they were hit as well, but we only contribute small amounts.

The way it works is that our engineers come in, assess the damages and give a quotation. We then get a contractor to take care of the whole thing and return the house as it was. We have identified a bunch of contractors who have all the supplies needed and are pricing us at cost.

We raised $40,000 through the GoFundMe campaign. Also, when word of what we were doing through Beit Beit started spreading out, we started receiving a lot of donations from Lebanon, whether through cash dollars or cheques in lollars. Now I think we are almost at $60,000 and LBP60 million, total. On average, the cost of repairing each home is $1,200.  

We are all volunteers. We have inspected 89 houses; we took on 52, and today we are down to the last one fixing. We will stop here. Two of the cofounders are leaving Lebanon so there is a lot of work added on those who are staying and we have our full-time jobs.

I think people grieve in different ways and I think co-founding Beit-Beit at least gave me some sense of agency at a personal level.

I know people whose reaction to the blast was that they are done with Lebanon and are out of here. So at least this made me feel that there is something I can do still, although I believe whatever we do now is minimal in the grander scheme of things.

Professionally, I’ve worked at consulting and finance. Specifically, for the last few years I’ve been consulting for start-ups.

At the same time, I’ve always liked politics and have been involved in activism since high school. In 2012, I was part of the “Take Back the Parliament” movement and in 2015 I was involved with activism at the time of the garbage crisis. I was part of the people who started Beirut Madinati and then in the parliamentary elections, I was part of Kelna Beirut.

I’m not opposed to leaving Lebanon but I’m not actively seeking to do so . I am lucky that I still have my projects. If I were unemployed, I might have thought differently. I’ve lived abroad a long time; the grass is always greener on the other side. Every country has its problems. I spent seven years in the US and I had so much fun, I learned a lot and grew a lot but I always wanted to come back. There is a sense of connection here that does not exist in the US.

On the political level, I think we are in a very bad situation. We are going through dark days and I think it will stay a while like that. One thing that gives me hope is the amount of initiatives like ours, whether in housing or food…it’s very interesting that there is a kind of parallel economy that is being born. This can be built upon.

Revolutions happen but change does not happen as fast. I always compare revolutions to the panic attacks you get : they are a signal that you need to change things in your life. When you start changing things, this is when change happens. The revolution itself is just a moment of anger telling you that things need to change; at least this is the way I see it.

In the long term, let’s say in ten years, I am hopeful.

On a personal level, I still go into extremes. Sometimes I believe a lot in Lebanon. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve come back; I do believe that. But other times I go into hopelessness. I oscillate a lot between anger and hope -because I think that this anger can bring about change – and hopelessness.”

Text: Dima Rahhal
Photo courtesy of Rida Mawla