Alia is finally on solid grounds, running her home-based business

AMMAN — Despite her troubled past and huge responsibilities, Alia Rajab enjoys a stable life now, running her home-based business thanks to self-determination and the life skills and entrepreneurial training she received.

Forty-year-old Alia says that she doesn’t have a university education, due to poverty and “social stigma”.

“I was the youngest child in my family and was good at school. I wanted to study journalism or law, but my brothers were against my ambitions due to poverty and social stigma,” Alia says.

Losing hope in her education chances, Alia started looking for a job to support herself and her sick mother. “I was a working woman at a very young age.”

She worked in sewing and as a hairdresser, since she had worked in a beauty salon when she was 18 years old and gained first-hand experience in the field. “I worked in the salon for one year and I received no payment, but it really helped me improve my skills. It was a job in exchange for experience.”

When she was 19, Alia worked with family protection centres for one year as a caregiver for maltreated children, “but that job broke my heart”, she says.

A few years later, Alia got married and gave birth to two children. Yet, her husband did not allow her to work outside the house. Their marriage lasted for 10 years, then her husband died. With her two children, Alia moved to a small apartment, with the help of relatives and charity societies. “There was nothing in the fridge sometimes to feed my children,” Alia says, adding that she worked hard, following the death of her husband, as a beautician and in charity societies.

In her quest to improve her life, Alia attended many training courses; the most recent one being by CARE Jordan in November 2020.

She has also joined a saving fund run by CARE, and with the loan she received, she bought more tools and materials. With other 14 women, she also attended an intensive online course on business development and life skills as part of the Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) project, which aims at empowering women through sustainable businesses.

Working under the support of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme, the VSLA aims at economically empowering disadvantaged women from the Jordanian and refugee communities through their participation in microsaving groups, which provide them with an opportunity to access basic financial services, pool monetary resources, and develop small-scale business opportunities.

Alia attended 22 classes on personal and business development, marketing, financial management, customer service, problem-solving and negotiation skills, self-confidence, decision-making, amongst others.

She explains that the course has exposed her to practical knowledge, development of skills and effective networking strategies. 

Alia now receives customers at her home-based salon in Amman’s Al Hashimi Al Shamali neighbourhood, where she also sells beauty products and accessories.

“I am a lot better off now and able to generate a stable income from my home-based business.”

CARE’s Economic Empowerment Programme Coordinator Taghreed Saeed explains that the VSLA Project is centred around helping refugees and local communities establish their sustainable businesses. “While carrying out our duty in supporting refugees and local communities, our priority is to enhance their resilience and self-reliance through helping them establish their own sustainable projects, instead of always waiting for cash assistance.”

CARE Jordan has been running Village Saving and Loans Associations (VSLAs) since 2013 to enhance the access of underserved communities to microfinance. 

To date, 2411 refugee and Jordanian women have been engaged in VSLAs in local communities and were able to secure financial resources to grow or start their home-based businesses.  

(CARE Jordan contributed this article to The Jordan Times)