The Prosperity Co-Laboratory for Lebanon (PROCOL Lebanon)
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A street view from Hamra Neighborhood (Source: Wiaam Haddad, April 2024)
The Premise of PROCOL Lebanon
The Prosperity Co-Laboratory for Lebanon (PROCOL Lebanon) is a transdisciplinary research collaboration that focuses on speeding up transitions to sustainable, prosperous societies in the context of mass displacement, and to improve the quality of people’s lives through citizen-led research. Its research and learning is focused on inclusive growth and prosperity. It is about the prosperity of Lebanon in particular, but is also part of a larger agenda for developing sustainable ways to improve the quality of life of people throughout the world. In the context of Lebanon, developing an agenda of prosperity is particularly urgent because of the pressures that the country is facing as a result of the ongoing refugee crisis. Addressing these challenges through the lens of prosperity increases the potential of future economic development and growth in Lebanon. PROCOL Lebanon is based on a network of partnerships for citizen-led research, capacity building, place-based interventions and policy design that demonstrates the means through which transformation for prosperity can be achieved.
Building on the RELIEF CENTRE Achievements
PROCOL Lebanon builds on the achievements of the RELIEF Centre and embed them into the practices of knowledge transfer, value creation and capacity building initiatives of its partners and collaborators, laying the foundations for future resilience and transformational responses to future challenges.
The RELIEF Centre’s program on citizen-led solutions has become more urgent and significant over its lifetime, as continuing government failure means that stakeholders and citizens must rely on local resources, networks, and opportunities for self-organization. PROCOL Lebanon aims to support these initiatives underpinned by citizen capacities and capabilities in these five domains: 1) Established Partnerships for prosperity, 2) Developed theories and concepts, 3) Designed methods, 4) Collected data, and 5) Funding, and to actively support the delivery of co-designed outputs/impacts that respond to existing and emergent needs. A protracted crisis of this nature and complexity cannot yield to definitive resolutions, but it is susceptible to forms of value creation and co-designed interventions that deliver on improvements in quality of life through a series of processes of resolution or pathways towards prosperity. The demonstration of the character and social and economic value of such processes is the purpose of PROCOL Lebanon. This research will have benefits for Lebanon, the wider MENA region and for countries experiencing mass displacement across the globe.
The RELIEF Centre’s program on citizen-led solutions has become more urgent and significant over its lifetime, as continuing government failure means that stakeholders and citizens must rely on local resources, networks, and opportunities for self-organization. PROCOL Lebanon aims to support these initiatives underpinned by citizen capacities and capabilities in these five domains: 1) Established Partnerships for prosperity, 2) Developed theories and concepts, 3) Designed methods, 4) Collected data, and 5) Funding, and to actively support the delivery of co-designed outputs/impacts that respond to existing and emergent needs. A protracted crisis of this nature and complexity cannot yield to definitive resolutions, but it is susceptible to forms of value creation and co-designed interventions that deliver on improvements in quality of life through a series of processes of resolution or pathways towards prosperity. The demonstration of the character and social and economic value of such processes is the purpose of PROCOL Lebanon. This research will have benefits for Lebanon, the wider MENA region and for countries experiencing mass displacement across the globe.