A self-sufficient and successful couple—a teacher and a judge—suddenly found their world turned upside-down in March 2011, when they were forced to flee their home in Syria due to the violent civil war. Today, they live in a foreign land, impoverished, unable to pursue their careers or support their children without the help of others. Meanwhile, a mother becomes tearful as she laments the fact that her children must work and have no time for school.

Lebanon has a refugee problem—a bad one. War and political turmoil have brought more than one million Syrians to this tiny Mediterranean nation.

These newcomers join previous waves of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees; approximately 1 in 4 persons of the country’s 4.4 million is now a refugee.

The result is a major humanitarian catastrophe, now in its seventh year. The original goal of the humanitarian response was to stabilize the situation and return refugees to their homes in Syria; that is now a distant hope. Many refugees have now spent the better part of a decade in the country, and are still living on the margins, neither benefiting from nor contributing to the local economy.

Nonetheless, the possibility of expanding existing social enterprises to serve Syrian refugees appears to be a viable option. As funders look for ways to maximize the impact of their investments in a crisis in which every dollar counts, we recommend they turn their attention in this direction.

Read the full article by Edward Grom and Teresa Chahine on Stanford Social Innovation Review