ABBAS

A young man walks towards his front door, he gets on a motorcycle, and rides off into the streets of Ghaziye, in the South of Lebanon.

We followed him; eager to know what turn he would be taking next.

A few minutes later, Abbas parks next to a beautiful garden. He gets off the bike and pulls out a bag from the storage box.

A man shows up next to the gate. Abbas walks towards him, delivers the bag and completes the transaction. His job is done!

Abbas is twenty three years old. After graduating from High school, he enrolled in in a public university in Nabatiyeh but had to drop out the year prior graduation due to his family’s difficult financial situation. Coincidentally, that's when the Nawaya team came to give a info session about the Innovation and Entrepeneurship program at the school. Abbas’s friend immediately took it upon himself to inform him about the training.

“That’s how I contacted Nawaya and enrolled. I didn’t have a clear idea for a business, but I was excited to start somewhere”.  Throughout the training, he started coming up with solutions he could provide his community with. And that’s how "Hader", Abbas' small enterprise idea, was born.

Abbas realized that there was a poor delivery system in his village, and that, by offering his delivery services, he would not only be able to work himself but would also be facilitating people’s daily lives. “The idea is very simple yet in demand in our village, people place orders from the supermarket, pharmacy or even a restaurant, and I pick up their deliverables for them and drop them off at their homes,” says Abbas.

With the seed funding offered through the incubation phase of our program, Abbas has bought two motorcycles for his business and created flyers and business cards that he distributed all over the village.

“That’s how my first client heard of me an asked me to pick up some groceries for him from the supermarket. And that’s also how people started contacting me”, says Abbas. And even more, he only charges 3,500 Lebanese Pounds per delivery.

“My customers are the ones who allow me to grow, which makes me very happy because I feel extremely useful”.

Abbas is looking forward to the future and is hoping to expand his small business to other places all over Lebanon.

"Hader" is a small enterprise incubated by The Nawaya Network and @UNICEFLebanon and funded by @Embassyofthenetherlandsinlebanon.

Picture and text by Maria Achkar

Nour Oweity

On the third floor of an old Lebanese building in Beirut, Nour, a young refugee greets us at the door of the apartment she shares with her husband, Omar.

Art and Film posters fill the entire entrance wall, which leads onto a living room overflowing with clothes, an easel and paints.

Like many others, Nour and her husband Omar fled the Syrian war and came to Lebanon to build a better life for themselves.

Nour was studying Fine Arts in university and her academic path came to an end a year before graduating when she decided to follow her husband to Lebanon.

Nour found Nawaya through Facebook, she joined our Innovation and Entrepeneurship training with a clear vision: to use her craft in a meaningful and helpful way.  

“I have always sought ways to collaborate with women who have great skills but no opportunity to use them,” says Nour.

It wasn't long before Nour, started accompanying her husband Omar on visits to refugee camps. While he worked on training refugees in drama and created plays for them to act in, Nour was meeting women who sew clothes that she could design and paint on. 

Her small enterprise, NOON Clothes Redesign, not only offers unique clothing designs but also helps empower refugee women by providing them with a a source of revenue. 

With the help of our business coaches and seed funding, Nour has been able to launch this small enterprise and is constantly looking for new sales avenues for her designs.

Noon Clothing Redesign was incubated by The Nawaya Network and @UNICEFLEBANON and funded by @EmbassyofthenetherlandsinLebanon

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar

IDEAL MOTOR:

Our next Nawaya success story takes us 114 kilometers South of Beirut. We drove through beautiful green massive landscapes in Southern Lebanon to arrive to the small town of Meiss El Jabal. We were greeted at the door of an old village house by two 19 year olds, Hassan and Mohammad.  These two young mechanical engineering students are currently enrolled in LIU Nabatiyeh, to which they commute for an hour daily.

“We heard of Nawaya through our university and just couldn’t wait to start a new exciting project!” said both young students.

Born and raised in Meiss El Jabal, Hassan and Mouhammad have always had a passion for electrical engineering and were now looking for a bigger and more stimulating challenge outside of college. Once enrolled in Nawaya's Innovation and Entrepeneurship program, they started brainstorming for new solutions around one of the country's biggest problems, the daily electrical shortages which leave people without electricity for hours on end, sometimes even days.

This is when Hassan and Mohammad started developing their prototype; an affordable, self-starting and rechargeable power generator to counter the power cuts, a machine they have named: "Ideal Motor."

“We just finished our prototype a couple of weeks ago. The process took a bit of time since we had to go to Beirut several times to buy the spare parts with the seed funding we got from Nawaya," says Hassan.

Mohammad went on to explain that the machine generates a voltage of 3,5 and should be recharged similarly to recharging a phone for a few hours. Anytime the power cuts, the "Ideal Motor" would generate electricity that would last for two days.

“It’s been quite a journey and we are far from being done. It’s taken a lot of trial and error to build this prototype,” says Hassan.

The young engineers explained that for now, the machine could only power small items but that "in order to create a big bottle, they should build a small bottle and work slowly towards their greater vision”.

Hassan and Moahammad hope their project will gradually get bigger and that more and more people from neighboring villages will order their generator.

“Our goal for now is to provide apartments with generators that can power the entire household, and later, build on this machine to create a stronger one that would power an entire building”.

"Ideal Motor " is a small innovative and green enterprise incubated by The Nawaya Network and @UNICEFLebanon and funded by @Embassyofthenetherlandsinle

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar

Emne and Eugenie - Food Tourism

"My parents always gave me the freedom to believe in whatever I wanted, which is a decision that shaped the open minded person I am today”.

Growing up with a muslim sunni mother from chebaa ( south of lebanon) and a chistian orthodox dad from akkar (north of lebanon), Lynn grew up in a household where she experienced two very different ways of life that co-lived in harmony. Since her early years, Lynn had the choice of choosing whatever made her happy, and what made her happy was to sit in the kitchen and watch both her grandmothers cook.

“I used to  spend endless hours sitting at the kitchen table, watching my grandmothers. I truly enjoyed the whole process. I remember asking them a million questions about the ing”.

At the age of 19, like most youngsters, Lynn was a bit confused as to what she should study. She therefore enrolled at the Lebanese University and picked English literature.

But things didn’t really go according to plan: " I had a very hard time integrating the schools since I l both looked different and thought differently than all the rest. I was drowning in political and religious atmospheres that were so foreign to me”.She was often bullied and was constantly receiving bad looks from other students.

With the start of University elections, began the quarrel and fights. It was on that day that Lynn decided to drop out. For her, it was no longer possible to stay.

She then enrolled in LIU in salim sleim -graphic design, where she also unfortunately  got  bullied.

One time, she even got harassed and took it upon herself to go to the administration and file a complaint, but since her voice was not taken seriously, she decided to once again leave college.

Knowing that her liberal identity wasn’t really fitting her entourage , Lynn had to look deep within her self and embark on a new journey, which is to find what she wants to pursue.Shortly after, she decided to travel to Australia where her partner lives,  but when the time came to move after having been accepted in a school, her papers got jumbled up and didn’t allow her to move forward.

But Lynn is no quitter and didn’t give up. She was still keen on finding what made her happy. "I have to do something, I m not just gonna sit and cry about my state”.

In the meantime, both Lynn’s parents remarried and the young girl found herself with additional family members, which interestingly enough made her travel much more within Lebanon and broadened her understanding of the country. She then realized that discovering a new way of life in Australia and being back in Lebanon naturally want to integrate culinary tricks she had learned in Australia back here in Lebanon. And then, it hit her! Since she had no job, no plans to study and couldn’t afford a good university in Lebanon, she realized that food was no longer a hobby for her, but her true passion!

Luckily enough,  lynn’s dad  was working in the office next to one of Nawaya’s training centers and told his daughter about our innovation and entrepreneurship program.

And this is how Lyn’s project,Emne and Eugenie, was born. Inspired by her childhood memories, the project includes creating a series of weekly workshops which involves day-trips for tourists foodies and culture enthusiasts who want to experience cooking, food tasting and recipe exchange in different parts of Lebanon while engaging with the elderly hosts in each area.

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar

A solution to every problem:

“I remember quite vividly talking to a 3 year old boy who lives in my neighborhood. He looked happy and healthy. A few hours later, I was told that he had passed.”

These are the words of Sidkia Abou Kasem, a 21-year-old Palestinian woman living in the camps of Borj el Barajne in Lebanon.

The reason for his death? Cables. Electric cables wired all around and above the camps, disabling the inhabitants of Borj El Barajne from roaming around freely as they are constantly fearing electrocution if they were to accidentally touch a loose cable or if a cable suddenly falls on them.

After his sudden death, the little boy’s best friend considered touching the cables, thinking it would take him to his friend.

This tragedy is just one of the countless incidents in the camps where many have been killed by loose electric cables. Sadika’s brother was electrocuted a few years back, which left him in a coma for a few months, and permanently semi-paralyzed his right hand. Sadika recalled many other occurrences, one of which was the sudden death of a young man by a dangling electric cable as he was walking to his high school prom.

“We are no longer free, even in our own camps”, insists Sadika, which is why she decided to join Nawaya’s Impact Lab program in hopes of figuring out a way to fix the cable dispositions and keep inhabitants safe from harm.

Life has not been very easy for this solution-driven and determined young woman. Being the only girl within a family of 4 boys, and having an unemployed father and a stay-at-home mom with fragile health, Sadika found the will to pursue her studies in Marketing and Sales Management in Sibline’s training center. She has been relentlessly working on entrepreneurial and life skills by attending different workshops outside of her school and persistently pursuing her passions.

Sadika is taking on Nawaya’s program by storm, with a thirst and passion to make change happen and not wait for it to come.

This program was made possible with support from UNICEF Lebanon and Embassy of the Netherlands in Lebanon

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar

Lone Wolf Comics

Hussein, our comic book illustrator has embarked on a new journey: To perfect his craft and one day become a professional in the field! And what better way than to have a great mentor such as Lena Mehri, a professional comic book artist, to guide him through this adventure!

Lena Merhej is a visual storyteller and a Ph.D. Fellow doing research on graphic narratives in the interdisciplinary field between visual studies, narratology and computer science. She previously taught at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University, and gave various workshops in animation, illustration and comic books.

Her art work took international awards, as well as the comics magazine Samandal that she co-founded and is an active member in.

Like every Friday morning, the Nawaya Team arrived at the office. As soon as we entered the space, we saw a young man receiving his weekly business sessions.
On the table next to him were papers filled with comic book drawings.

Hussein Ayoub is a 20 year old young man. While he was studying computer science at the Lebanese University in Hadath, he was forced to drop out because of both financial difficulties he was facing at home and because his major also required a high level of Mathematical skills he was lacking.
After leaving University, Hussein found himself looking for jobs and so happened to contact a friend who immediately referred him to the Nawaya Network.

Hussein had actually been drawing intensively for the past 5 years. His passion really took off when his aunt took him to attend a drawing workshop back in 2006 and he hasn’t stopped drawing ever since.
Thought the Nawaya Training, this skilled young man has come up with his own business idea, an agency he has named: Lone Wolf Comic.

"Thanks to Nawaya,I received a laptop and a Tablet, which has allowed me to work even more on my digital drawing skills", shared Hussein.
What is hisThe vision? To become very knowledgeable in the industry of comic books in Lebanon and also become a professional comic book artist and offer his services through his platform Lon Wolf comics.

Hussein is currently planning on working on writing and illustrating his own story. 
This project has been made possible thanks to UNICEF Lebanon and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Lebanon.

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar

Kurdum

Nadia is a young Kurdish mother who fled Syria due to the war. She settled in Burj Hammoud along with her family where she started working in a clothing shop, learned how to sew and came up with the concept of Kurdum. Kurdum is Nadia's small business idea that came as an answer to a lack in traditional Kurdish clothing on the market. Through her enterprise, she aims to modernize traditional Kurdish fashion to better fit the younger generations' taste while making sure Kurdish traditions lives on.

This project wouldn't have been possible with the support of UNICEF Lebanon and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Lebanon.

Picture and Text by Maria Achkar