Author Archives: eliefares

Lebanon’s New Ambitious Startup: Turning Car Tires Into Fashion

Lebanon is the country where car tires have functions that surpass them being, well, the things on which cars roll. 

Where we come from, tires can be used to block off roads by protestors. They can also be used by the police or contractors to divert traffic. And, when shit hits the fan, they serve as incenerator hubs to fill Beirut’s sky with marks of some group’s political anger. Speaking of burning tires, it has been a long time, hasn’t t?

A Lebanese startup, called VEA, started by Patrick El Zoghbi aiming to protect the environment in the region while finding new ways to use material that would have been otherwise detrimental to nature and to our health. 

The entire premise of VEA is to be an environmentally friendly company. From having minimal printing policies, to using only recycled paper up to their main motivation: turning tires into fashion items, including using environmentally friendly items in those fashion items.

This is what VEA is set on producing:

   

           

I think the plan is extremely ambitious. I commend VEA for their efforts in 1) providing alternatives to the Lebanese and International market that divert from the regular available items they’re selling, 2) doing so in a way that is both environmentally friendly and innovative and 3) having it actually be affordable. 

The price range for the above items ranges from $50 to $1000, so it is affordable for a wide range of people.

To do all of this, VEA needs your help. Check out the following link for more information. Help them out – it’s always good to make sure Lebanese aspirations don’t get squashed because of lack of funds.

This is a video explaining the whole process: 

http://youtu.be/pAAqqmuAXuA

Help Out 23 Year Old Nibale Beat Cystic Fibrosis!

Nibale Cystic Fibrosis Lebanon

Nibale is a 23 year old Lebanese girl who has been suffering from cystic fibrosis since she was a child. For those who don’t know, cystic fibrosis is a very challenging disease that manifests through repeated lung infections, insufficiency of the pancreas along with a ton of associated complications (medical link). Patients who have the disease end up literally suffocating to death.

Nibale is fast approaching that point. She is at terminal stages of the illness where medical therapy doesn’t work anymore. What Nibale needs now is a lung transplant, which is an operation that costs more than 300,000 euros. Her family doesn’t have that amount, which is why I think we should all mobilize to help.

We’ve all proven that when we can as an online community and as Lebanese, helping out people to try and beat illnesses when the only hurdle is money is entirely possible. We raised the money for Simon when he was fighting leukemia, a fight that he ultimately did not win but he got a fighting chance because of us anyway. We raised the money for Carina Aoun in her attempt at helping out Palestinian children in a mental health project.

Today, Nibale’s life rests in our hands. We are the only chance she has. Given that it’s Easter time, the sensible thing to do would be to help. That would be an act of goodness that actually counts, far more than going to 7 churches and attending all-nighters prayer sessions or even praying 5 times a day.

To donate, LBC has come up with the following campaign on this  link. There’s no bank account number yet, so I will update this post in due time. However, for those of you who can’t the aforementioned Arabic link, here are the relevant information:

Contact +9619658658 or +9619850850; ext : 1130 – 1131 if you can donate. Or email menelaleb@lbci.com with your name, phone number and amount you’d be willing to donate.

 

Alt-J Coming To Lebanon This Summer At The Byblos Festival

Alt-J

Your prayers have been answered, indie music Lebanese fans, for this year’s concerts are no longer just about the music you run away from. Rejoice!

Since you, my dearest readers, deserve a bit of happy news every now and then on here, I am leaking your way some major information that was shared my way. Yes, the Byblos Festival will be more than John Legend and The Script. Yes, you don’t need to keep worrying that it’s just too *mainstream* this year.

British band Alt-J will be coming to Lebanon for a concert this summer! It’s confirmed. The date will be announced soon. So for those who were in a state of panic, you can now relax (and get your money ready) because I’m sure this leak will brighten your day.

For those who don’t know them, Alt-J rose to prominence in 2012 with the album “An Awesome Wave.” Their latest offering, This Is All Yours, released in 2014, managed to top the UK albums chart. Their most famous song worldwide is “Tessellate,” which was covered by Ellie Goulding later on.

The song they rose to prominence with, however, is “Breezeblocks” which has clocked so far over 50 million hits on YouTube:

One thing to be said about all of this is kudos to the Byblos Festival for bringing high-profile talents to Lebanon year after year. Along with Alt-J, they are bringing John Legend who had the past year’s biggest hits in “All Of Me” as well as materializing a concert by “The Script” who were long-rumored to be coming.

In making sure that it is always of international caliber, Byblos Festival has consistently been a highlight of every summer we’ve had in Lebanon. And with all of this to the backdrop of arguably the country’s most touristic city, Jbeil, it becomes something you can’t not be proud of.

My hat goes off to all the effort that goes into making this successful and news-worthy every single year.

Update:

August 18th’s the date.

Alt-J Lebanon August 18

Hiba Tawaji Wins & Advances To The Final Stages Of France’s The Voice

Hiba Tawaji has won her part of the knockout stages (epreuve ultime) in France’s The Voice – the last of the previously taped segments of the show – and has advanced to the finals of the show, the live shows.

Starting next week, Hiba along with 3 other candidates in her team, will perform a song of their choice to the public live after which audiences will get a chance to vote for all candidates, making sure one of them proceeds to the following week in the progress while the coach chooses who of the other candidates remains and one is eliminated.

If the hype is to be believed, Tawaji has a good chance at advancing in the live shows. Her performances are reportedly among the most watched of the show (her audition has over 1 million hits on YouTube and over 600,000 on TF1’s website, well ahead of all auditions of the show).

In the knockout stage, Tawaji performed Christina Aguilera’s signature song “Fighter.” She did well, but was criticized for her song choice as the coaches felt it didn’t suit her quite well. It’s telling, in my opinion, when an artist as good as Hiba Tawaji has trouble with song selection. It goes to show how far our artists are sheltered, maybe even left without artistic freedom, in their careers.

Either way, French audiences were very receptive of the song.

 

This is a video of the performance courtesy of my blog’s Facebook page (click).

It is worth noting that part of Mika’s team for the live shows includes an Israeli, named Sharon Lalom. For the upcoming live shows, Hiba Tawaji will be battling it out with Sharon for people’s votes and Mika’s favor. She may end up finding herself in a picture with her, in the same television frame as her or whatnot. Let us do our best as Lebanese not to fall into the traps of accusing her of treason for participating.

This is our chance to show that, at a simple ultimately useless talent show, we can take the higher road and “resist” by actually winning, showing that the talents of our country are great enough on their own merit and can kick anyone’s ass, Israeli or not.

Good luck to her!

Carina Aoun: The Lebanese Cycling Holland For The Children of Gaza

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It hasn’t been a year yet since Israel brutally attacked the Gaza sector, leaving hundreds of dead and thousands of families torn apart, but our collective memory has already dismissed the whole thing as another “been there, done that” event.

We may have forgotten, but those in Gaza are still trying to put their lives back together after all the destruction. It’s always much, much harder to rebuild following destruction, and that is the brave thing to do after war. However, those little children of Gaza that Arabs care about only through Facebook statuses and rarely in action, cannot rebuild alone.

Wars have devastating effects on people, especially children who are in the tender ages of forming the people that they would become. They end up being scarred for life, along with a constellation of psychiatric issues to add. The estimates are that about “373,000 children in Gaza suffer from emotional and psychological trauma and are in dire need of mental care support and reintegration into society.”

To that effect, a Lebanese named Carina Aoun is taking part of an initiative called Cycling For Gaza, and along with 45 other volunteers from across the world, intends to cycle 300km in 3 days this coming July from Amsterdam to The Hague in order to raise money for ” The Mental Health Project of Gaza.”

The goal is to raise $286,000, of which only $5,400 has been donated so far. Each of those 45 volunteers has their very own donation page with the total amount ending up converging into the required $286,000.

The volunteering is taking place within the framework of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) which is the main organization that takes care of Palestinian children, sending them abroad for medical care or providing medical attention to them locally from visiting surgery teams. They have helped over 10,000 children so far.

Their purpose behind the Mental Health Project of Gaza is to start a pediatric mental health hospital as well as run it for an entire year, including providing care to children, screening them, as well as provide training for personnel (link).

Carina Aoun is trying to raise $3000 only for the project and she’s about halfway there. Help her out, and make a difference in the lives of countless of children who can’t make it otherwise.

This is the link to donate (click).