Starting from scratch: Libyans struggle to build a civil society

For the Child and Promise Association, founded in March, that quest led to the swanky Tripoli hotel. 

Association founders Talal Giuma, and Mohamed Benazzouz volunteered for years at Tripoli's main hospital, where Mr. Benazzouz is a part-time general surgeon. 

“Every day we saw children suffering,” says Mr. Giuma, a social worker. “We want to do something to help end it.”

The two men have big dreams – from a cultural center to a children’s cancer treatment facility – but little experience and no money. They hope to raise support with a dinner for Libyan and United Nations officials, diplomats, and businessmen, but first they need a venue.

Mr. Giuma and Mr. Benazzouz took seats in the hotel lobby while member Abubaker Bhih was dispatched to see the manager. The minutes ticked by. Outside, waves were rolling gently over a line of rocks offshore where some children were swimming. 

Finally Mr. Bhih returned. They could have the garden for free, he said, but the manager wanted 3,000 dinars for the catering. 

 “3,000 dinars…” Giuma said, trailing off.

It was the third hotel they had tried. The scene of quiet frustration was captured, as if in still-life, by a large wall mirror.

How the Libyan Women's Forum found funds

Shahrazad Magrabi, a former state-owned oil company employee, has taken a different route. Her group, the Libyan Woman’s Forum, found support abroad for training female candidates to run in congressional elections held earlier this month.

“In Libya, the culture of giving to civil society is absent,” she says, explaining why she looked elsewhere. “Qaddafi ruined it. If I ask for money, people assume I will misuse it."

The group, which meets in cafes because it lacks an office, has been shortlisted for a United Nations grant for a women’s education center. In the meantime, Mrs. Magrabi emailed the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR), a Tunis-based women’s group. An invitation to Tunis followed.

Mrs. Magrabi made the day-long trip in March with a fellow Libyan Woman’s Forum member and the latter’s husband in his taxi.

“For two days they tested us,” she says. “They asked about the forum, had us meet all their people. Finally they asked about project proposals.”

CAWTAR ultimately paid for and helped run an ice-breaker meeting and two of three workshops where women candidates got crash courses in electoral politics and public speaking. Magrabi says she learned two major lessons: one, to divide her group into teams based on their tasks and second, that you don't need many people to accomplish something.

"One person can work as hard as 100 if he or she is focused," she says. 

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