What can eight days of focused effort actually accomplish?

Fourty-four SMEs. Eighteen cooperatives. Sixty-two businesses total, all trained in one intensive push across the Bekaa.

Fair Trade Lebanon just wrapped this cycle under the ARADINA project, packing 78 sessions on 11 different topics into a single, fast-moving stretch. The focus throughout was practical, technical skills: the kind that change how a business runs day to day, not just what it knows on paper.

Running that many entities through one concentrated cycle isn’t just about speed. It means businesses working side by side, comparing notes, and building on each other’s questions in real time, rather than each covering the same ground months apart.

It’s part of a bigger effort. ARADINA is working to make the Lebanese agri-food sector more sustainable and more competitive, and Fair Trade Lebanon’s role covers everything from capacity building to brand development to market access. This training cycle is that work made visible, in rooms full of business owners and cooperative members putting new tools to use.

The Bekaa was also a natural place to start; it’s one of the regions where ARADINA’s support runs deepest, and where the density of agri-food SMEs and cooperatives made an intensive, entity-heavy cycle worth the investment.

Next, the same model moves to Akkar, North Lebanon, and the Shouf, where 120 more sessions are already in the pipeline, with the same bet that concentrated training delivers results businesses can actually use.