Vitas Lebanon

Vitas Palestine (formerly called Ryada) started as a project in the Gaza Strip in 1994 under a cooperative agreement between USAID and Global Communities (formerly CHF International). The original design of the program was based on a housing finance downscaling model for banks, whereby Global Communities' role was to originate loans and provide technical assistance on the construction process, while its partner banks provided the lending capital and were responsible for all loan processing, monitoring and collection. Global Communities and the banks shared the capital, risk and income, and it was anticipated that banks would eventually take over the portfolio. Since then, Vitas Palestine has evolved into a program with its own portfolio serving low to moderate-income individual business and home owners who cannot access mainstream credit sources. It has expanded its branches, number of clients, product offering and gross loan portfolio significantly and is now one of the three largest microfinance institutions in Palestine. Vitas Palestine has its Head office in Ramallah Albireh and ten branches throughout Palestine located in Gaza, Khanyounes, Beitlahya, Hebron, Dura, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya and Ramallah. Vitas Palestine's vision states: "All people with a desire and capacity to improve their lives should have access to the financial services they need to help them realize their potential and become full social and economic participants in their communities." In light of recently adopted banking laws and microfinance regulations that require any institution practicing lending to be registered as a non-for-profit or for-profit company and to be licensed by the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA), Global Communities decided to register a for-profit company called Vitas Palestine. In early 2015 all of Ryada's assets were moved to the new company, which is 97% owned by Global Communities and 3% owned by Vitas Group, and Vitas Palestine was officially launched on January 1st, 2015, officially complying with all PMA requirements.