Development of Social Service Providers Registry

The Ministry of Social Affairs is the governmental entity in charge of coordinating the provision of social protection and assistance in Lebanon. Despite a mandate that includes planning for social policies, direct assistance, and social development, the ministry’s budget represents a minimal share of the government’s total budget, of which a significant portion is dedicated to the provision of specialized social development services and social care.

The 230 Social Development Centers (SDCs) are principal executive instruments to achieve the decentralized development strategy adopted by MOSA. They provide comprehensive services for the benefit and development of local communities. Besides, the social service providers of civil society play a prominent role in the provision of social services at the national and local levels. There are around 400 organizations that are funded by MoSA to provide a specific social service for different vulnerable groups. This pattern of social service providers lacks the coordination and sometimes the unified approach in tackling the social issues. Therefore, MoSA believes that it is essential to work towards creating coordination mechanisms among all concerned bodies to organize the national social work and to promote a reliable referral system including different stakeholders (Social Development Centers versus Civil Society Organizations and vice versa) to expand and diversify the services provided and to manage the available resources efficiently and effectively.

Therefore, the Ministry of Social Affairs decided to document/organize the process of registering social service providers by building a central database through an information system. This process will come after elaborating national definition of social services and after the identification and categorization of the social service providers in line with the role of the Ministry of Social Affairs. That will be followed by mapping the service providers and build up a database that will be linked to the E-network of the Social Development Centers.

 Accordingly, the ministry seeks the services of social development and civil society experts to develop the framework of social interventions and to structure the registry of the social service providers that will be hosted by MoSA based on a classification system in line with its role.