Impact of Recent Explosion in Lebanon on the Rotary Club
Biography of Joseph Maalouf
Joseph is a founding partner of Effiqual / Designed Learning Canada (established in 1991) and a co-founding partner of the Lebanese company Beyond Consulting & Training (2003). These two consulting firms specialize in assisting organizations to enhance quality, sustainability, agility and resilience through developing the person at work, creating an innovative culture, reforming management practices, rethinking the way to decentralize knowledge, responsibility and accountability across levels and functions. Effiqual and Beyond have clients in more than forty countries, serving more than 200 organizations, and training or coaching more than 5000 individuals.
Joseph is a founding member of Rotary Club Zahle-Bekaa in Lebanon and the Chairperson of the Rotary Foundation Committee. He has been an Assistant Governor and a trainer for numerous Rotary Seminars. He is as well a founding member of a number of NGOs specialized in the promotion of Democracy, Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Youth Education and Career Orientation.
Between 2009 and 2018, he was a Member of the Lebanese Parliament where he contributed on many legislative and scrutiny levels, especially on a spectrum of laws aimed at fighting corruption and promoting transparency. He developed, proposed and passed a widely recognized law addressing the “Promotion of Transparency in the Oil and Gas Sector of Lebanon”.Maha’s name has been synonymous with service since her teen Years. She started by volunteering as a tutor to her school and university colleagues and as a member of YMCA since her mid-teens and until graduating with a Masters in Biology.
Over four decades as a high school biology teacher, she was renowned for her high ethical standards and professionalism, and for guiding, counselling and coaching thousands of students who became successful physicians, nurses and medical professionals.
She has as well been elected for two terms as a member of the municipal council of the city of Zahle, Lebanon, and was instrumental in the cultural and women empowerment committees, and made a significant contribution in getting Zahle to be recognized by UNESCO as a City of Gastronomy since 2013.
Maha Maalouf Kassouf
Maha was born with a keen sense of responsibility towards Family, Society and Humanity at large. As evidenced in the below list of NGOs and Social Activities, she has been awarded and recognized as one of the most influential social activists on municipal, national, and with a number of international associations.
She has additionally intiated and contributed to many of the humanitarian projects to deal with the challenges that Lebanon has been facing over the last two decades, and especially since the October 17, 2019 revolution, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the calamities of August 4, 2020 catastrophic Port of Beirut explosion.