CIVIC

Commit Global has opened a space in Bucharest, welcoming visitors to engage with solutions from the Infrastructure for Good. This venue highlights the critical role of solidarity and humanitarian aid in supporting vulnerable communities in an ever-changing world. Through digital solutions developed in Romania, we demonstrate how technology can serve as a powerful tool for positive change.

This physical space showcases the efforts of our team, who leverage their digital expertise to assist those in need, and will be open to the public until December 2024. The opening was marked by the exhibition “Lebanon: Give us this day our daily bread,” part of the Noaptea Albă a Galeriilor event. The exhibition will remain open until October 13, 2024.

Exhibition Lebanon: Give us today our daily bread

Lebanon has fallen into war for 35 years out of the last 50. Lebanon has rarely been to war, but war has come to Lebanon over and over again, either from its neighbors or from the sectarian infight that has torn the country for decades.

From the most iconic buildings of the country, to every block of flats, destruction has visited Beirut and Lebanon more than any other place in the world, cursed to rise over and over again from their ashes.

Currently Lebanon is a failed state. A country without president or government, facing all possible crises at the same time: the aftermath of the Beirut explosion, a sectarian crisis between religious militias, a political crisis, an economic crisis, a financial crisis that has seen a 171% inflation, a refugee crisis from both Palestine and Syria and war in the South. With virtually no state budget, the government operates only one day per week and all basic services are covered by local or international NGOs.

War takes us back to the Stone Age. Crouching in the corner of a house - in a corridor, a stairwell - or in a bomb shelter, we forget about comfort.

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

“He’ll live, but with a bullet.” Twenty years later, the bullet is still there. I have gotten used to the foreign body that resides in my own body. Removing it wouldn’t change anything - the war inhabits me in any case.

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

“Muslim or Christian?”

“Christian. [...] What are you going to do to us?”

“We have to avenge one of our guys who was killed yesterday at a roadblock like this one”

“But I have nothing to do with that”

“You have to pay for the others”

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

One day I fell in love with a boy who was in love with birds. He could recognize them from their songs. I was telling this to my friend Ali and he told me he could also recognize the different sounds of bombs falling on Beirut.

(Jana Traboulsi - Safir Newspaper, 2005)

“Do you remember your first corpse?”

Uncle Michel talks about my first corpse as if it were my first kiss.

“Yes. I was nine.”

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

These trials have given me a new understanding of happiness. A day without bombings, a bridge that isn’t under sniper siege, a night without a blackout, a road without barricades, a clear sky across which no rockets shoot…for me all of this will henceforth be synonymous with happiness.

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

It was during the war that I learned to appreciate the value of water. Waiting in line with an empty can, I came to understand that it is as vital as the blood that runs through our veins. Before the war I used to waste water recklessly; I did not think it was of any value. I scorned the odorless, colourless liquid and, to be honest, I preferred soda or alcoholic drinks.

One day, at the height of the fighting, the water disappeared from our faucets.

(Alexandre Najjar - The School of War)

Commit Global is currently deploying the vital digital infrastructure for the Lebanese government, civil society, UN agencies and International NGOs to assist as many vulnerable people as possible: from offering mental health support, to ensuring medicine gets to the ones in need, to ensuring efficient shelter management for the ones displaced by war.

Photos taken during our last field mission to war ravaged South Lebanon in July 2024. The hallway and one of the rooms hosting an entire family in the most crowded refugee shelter hosted in a school in the South.

Our team has spent two months on the ground in Lebanon talking to officials, first responders and the most vulnerable affected by poverty and war in all areas of the country.

The first photo is taken at the end of one of many interviews with displaced people from war ravaged Southern Lebanon.

The second photo was taken in Aakkar (the poorest region in Northern Lebanon) and depicts employees of Nusaned, one of the vital Lebanese NGO we are supporting. We are currently digitizing the entire food vouchers system for the most vulnerable, saving dozens of hours of work Nusaned spends every week with paperwork.

four persons on our team have been on the ground in Lebanon:

Bogdan Ivanel: The Founder and CEO of Code for Romania / Commit Global, Bogdan was an international lawyer and a researcher in war zones before he founded Code for Romania 9 years ago. His work has taken him from Palestine to Nagorno-Karabakh and from Transnistria to Somalia. Now he is returning to many of these places to lead our humanitarian response.

Olivia Vereha: Co-founder of Code for Romania / Commit Global, Olivia is the main architect of our humanitarian infrastructure that has helped millions so far. A journalist by training, Olivia has migrated to UX Design and has shaped her new found profession away from its strictly commercial use into humanity centered design. She is currently spearheading our effort to build a coalition of world universities that will train the first generations of these new professionals.

Teodora Chiperi-Negru: Teo was one of the amazing students that joined our UX traineeship program at Babeș-Bolyai University. She joined our team when she was just finishing her studies and worked in our Ukraine intervention. Now, at just 24, she is our lead designer in the field building critical solutions that grant access to medication, resources, shelter and aid for the most vulnerable.

Isinsu Acar: One of our first international colleagues, Isinsu is a 27 years old Turkish national from Istanbul that has joined our Humanitarian team this year. Her first field mission was in April in Lebanon where she mapped and liaised with all relevant stakeholders on the ground.