Chadi Faraj is a social entrepreneur from Lebanon, who studied systems and networks engineering and worked as a software developer. Chadi co-founded several projects, one of them being the Bus Map Project. Bus Map tackles the issue of Beirut’s confusing and unregulated publics transportation system.

About of 30% of people in Lebanon use public transportation of some kind, with 15% taking the bus. The great majority of these bus trips happen on informally-operated routes. This means that there are no pre-set bus stops, only regular areas that people tend to board and disembark; no fixed schedule, only rhythms that people get used to; no obvious logos or branding, only numbers that people learn and faces that people recognize. Indeed, the majority of bus routes are run by individual operators who form informal associations per route.

Chadi knew that the only solution to Lebanon’s traffic problem is for more people to start taking the bus; and he was also aware of the fact that this would require a lot of different actors investing time, money and energy in improving the existing system. As a social entrepreneur, Chadi did not want to wait for perfect solutions to begin the work in order to make this shift. This is why he co-founded the Bus Map Project, a platform that shall empower bus operators to see new potentials in their own sector, at the same time encouraging Beirut’s inhabitants to use the bus, by providing a structured overview about the bus transportation options.

For the Bus Map Project, Chadi Faraj was selected as one of our 22 finalists of the MENA innovation challenge in 2020.