A Space for You: GNFF’s Vision for Lebanon’s Youth

In Lebanon, many young people are not only asking what to study, where to work, or what career to choose. They are also asking deeper questions.
Do I have a future here?
Who is listening?
Where do I belong?
How do I grow without losing hope?
And how can I contribute to a country that still feels uncertain?
These questions cannot be answered by one event, one workshop, one institution, or one speech.

At the Georges N. Frem Foundation, the answer begins with a clear promise to youth:
You are not alone. GNFF is building a space for you.

A space to learn, express yourself, build confidence, meet others, access opportunities, and discover your role in shaping the Lebanon you want to live in.

This is the heart of GNFF’s vision for youth and education.

GNFF’s youth work is not built around isolated programs. It is built around a wider belief: young people need an ecosystem of support.

They need access to education, but also mentorship. They need skills, but also confidence. They need creativity, but also direction. They need technology, but also emotional balance. They need opportunities, but also belonging. They need to prepare for the future while still feeling rooted in their communities.

As GNFF’s Executive Director expresses it:
“Our vision is to bring different initiatives together into one coherent journey for Lebanon’s youth: from access to education, to wellbeing, self-expression, and skills, to belonging, to opportunity, and ultimately, to active participation in shaping our nation’s future.”

GNFF does not claim to have all the answers. But it is choosing to listen, partner, build, and keep showing up.

A serious youth vision cannot begin with assumptions. It must begin with listening.

Young people today are looking for guidance without judgment, opportunities without exclusion, and belonging without conditions. They are asking how to deal with pressure, prepare for the future of work, use technology responsibly, express themselves, and stay connected to Lebanon without feeling limited by its challenges.

This is why GNFF’s approach is not to speak on behalf of youth, but to create spaces where youth can speak, participate, learn, and lead.

For many young people, the path to education is not blocked by lack of ambition. It is blocked by distance, cost, and unequal access.

This commitment to educational access has been at the heart of GNFF since its founder, Georges Frem, whose vision extended beyond establishing Pd’E to also supporting public education, through “Friends of Public Schools” and particularly Georges Frem Public Secondary School. His belief was simple yet enduring: every young person deserves the opportunity to continue their education, whether through university or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), regardless of their circumstances.

This is where the Student Journey Program plays a vital role.

For more than two decades, GNFF has supported students by helping them access higher education through safe and reliable daily transportation. But transport is only the entry point. The real ambition is the journey it enables.
The program reduces barriers and allows students to pursue education without losing their connection to their families, villages, and communities. It proves that access to education can be strengthened in a practical, disciplined, and community-rooted way.

This experience is also a model worth replicating. What GNFF has been doing for more than 20 years can inspire other institutions, municipalities, private sector actors, and community leaders to create similar pathways in other Lebanese regions. When access and local belonging are addressed together, more young people can continue their education and bring value back to the communities that shaped them.

GNFF’s ambition is to continue evolving this program into a fuller student journey, connecting youth to mentorship, exposure, skills, career pathways, and a stronger student community.

As part of this evolution, GNFF is preparing to introduce SJP Connect, a new application developed in collaboration with the LAU Industrial Hub to enhance the student experience within the program. This step reflects GNFF’s commitment to keeping long-standing programs relevant, data-informed, and aligned with innovative solutions that respond to youth needs today.

Some young people are searching for more than training. They are searching for direction, confidence, and a community that understands them.

This is the role of ENTO LEBNEN.

ENTO LEBNEN is GNFF’s youth platform for engagement, learning, dialogue, exposure, and national belonging. It brings young people together around the issues shaping their lives, from mental health and artificial intelligence to future skills, civic engagement, leadership, education, creativity, and responsibility toward Lebanon.

Its value is not only in the activities it offers, but in the way it sees youth: not as passive beneficiaries, but as participants, contributors, question-askers, idea-builders, and future leaders.

Within this platform, Lebanon Youth Day stands as the annual national gathering: a moment when youth from across Lebanon come together around inspiration, connection, and shared purpose.

But Lebanon Youth Day is not the whole story. It is the visible expression of a year-round commitment.

The ambition to make Lebanon Youth Day an official national day is not about adding another symbolic date to the calendar. It is about recognizing that youth deserve a permanent place in Lebanon’s national agenda.

Not every young person discovers their strength in a classroom. Some discover it on a stage, in a debate, through a performance, or in a moment where they feel seen for the first time.

This is why Théâtre Athénée Jounieh, launched by GNFF in 2003, is an essential part of the youth and education vision.

TAJ is more than a theatre. It is a space for talent development, awareness, and meaningful cultural engagement. Through acting classes, cine-clubs, debates, cultural activities, awareness sessions, knowledge sharing, and entertainment, TAJ helps children and young people build confidence, communication, creativity, emotional presence, and social connection.

In a time when many young people are constantly connected online but often disconnected in real life, TAJ protects something important: live human interaction.

Youth support cannot stop at encouragement. It must open doors.

This is why GNFF builds strategic partnerships with universities, public institutions, experts, and organizations that can expand what youth can access.

Partnerships with USEK, AUB, and LAU help connect young people to academic knowledge, research, field exposure, internships, community projects, innovation, mentorship, and professional pathways.

The partnership with the Ministry of Youth & Sports strengthens the national dimension of GNFF’s youth work and supports the pathway toward making Lebanon Youth Day an official national day.

Collaboration with experts in mental health, artificial intelligence, media, sports, education, and civic engagement ensures that youth are connected to people who understand the questions they are asking today.

For GNFF, partnership is not a logo on an event. It is a shared responsibility to create meaningful pathways for young people.

Youth development is not only about education, employment, or leadership. It is about the whole young person.

A young person cannot fully learn if they feel unseen. They cannot lead if they feel disconnected. They cannot build confidence if they have no space to try, fail, express, and grow. They cannot imagine a future if no one is helping them build the tools to reach it.

This is why GNFF’s youth work brings together access to education, skills development, emotional well-being, creativity, civic engagement, cultural participation, digital readiness, and opportunity creation.

The goal is not to produce one type of leader. The goal is to support many kinds of young people as they discover their own path: entrepreneurship, technology, art and culture, civic action, research, education, community service, agriculture, sustainability, or care for the land.

What they all need is to be respected, equipped, and encouraged.

Lebanon’s future cannot be rebuilt without its youth. But asking young people to stay, contribute, and lead requires more than motivational messages.

It requires serious platforms, real partnerships, practical opportunities, trusted spaces, and adults and institutions willing to listen before they guide.

Through ENTO LEBNEN, the Student Journey Program, Lebanon Youth Day, TAJ, university partnerships, ministry collaboration, and expert-led initiatives, GNFF is building a connected ecosystem that gives youth access, voice, skills, confidence, networks, and opportunities.

For partners, public authorities, and donors, this is an invitation to support a platform that is already moving: one that listens to youth, brings institutions together, connects programs with purpose, and transforms separate initiatives into a national youth journey.

For youth, the message is simpler:
There is a place for you here.

GNFF’s promise to youth is not that the road will be easy.

The promise is that you will not have to walk it alone.

This space is for the young person searching for direction, the student trying to continue their education, the dreamer who needs encouragement, the talented young person waiting for a stage, the one carrying pressure silently, the one who wants to serve Lebanon but does not yet know where to begin, and the one who wants to belong.

GNFF is building this space with youth, partners, institutions, and experts who believe that Lebanon’s young people deserve more than speeches about hope. They deserve pathways that help hope become possible.
You are not alone.

And your future deserves a space where it can grow.

GNFF’s youth community is open to young people between the ages of 16 and 30 from across Lebanon.

Whether you are looking for direction, a place to express yourself, a community to grow with, or an opportunity to contribute, this platform is being built with you in mind.

To be part of this journey, reach out to GNFF at +961 70 406 820 and take the first step toward connection, growth, and opportunity.