By Tamara Pupic

Having founded the MENA’s first freelance marketplace to provide a solution for the growing unemployment challenges back in 2012, Loulou Khazen Baz, founder of Nabbesh.com, has now set her eyes on creating virtual jobs for young people in Palestine.

Partnering with Qatar-based social imitative Silatech, Nabbesh has launched Fursati, meaning ‘my opportunity’, a pilot social programme to connect Gulf-based businesses with qualified Palestinian freelancers.

Baz has been reported as saying that the programme is a business opportunity with immense impact since 52 percent of Palestine’s university graduates were unemployed in the second quarter of 2015, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Nabbesh has been conducting a series of workshops in Palestine to educate freelance talent on how to register for work on the platform and apply for jobs.

They will also waive the commission fees for companies which outsource jobs via Fursati. Additionally, all wire transfer fees that freelancers would normally have to pay will be covered by the project.

Speaking about the initiative, Baz said: “Start-ups have to hire freelancers on a regular basis and normally need a lot of support when it comes to talent, and early stage start-ups don’t have the money to hire someone on a full time basis. Entrepreneurs can benefit from this, and have access to this talent.”

Since its inception Nabbesh, as an English and Arabic platform helping start-ups, SMEs and multinational companies find, hire and pay expert talent from the region, has connected over 5,000, mostly UAE-based companies with a community of over 80,000 freelancers from the region, facilitating 10,000 jobs and processing over Dhs 2mn in freelancer payments.

More than enough reasons to announce Loulou Khazen Baz as a worthy winner of this week’s Entrepreneur of the Week accolade.

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