Sudanese refugee in Egypt starts her own business and manages to gain financial independence

Al Batool, a single mother of four children was displaced from her native land in Sudan seven years ago. As a refugee in Egypt, she struggled to find childcare and thus, a stable job and income. She had identified a demand for Sudanese incense sticks in her community for a potential home-based business. Recognizing the need to learn the financial aspects of a business, she approached ILO PROSPECTS Egypt and Caritas in Alexandria to apply to the joint enterprise development programme with the aim of strengthening livelihood and employment opportunities in host and refugee communities. Through the SIYB training programme, she learned about different areas of business development and management and launched a sustainable enterprise. Eventually, upon good business performance, Al Batool also received seed funding through the PROSPECTS programme to expand her business.

Without knowing how to manage the financial aspects of business, entrepreneurs like me are unable to save and we find it difficult to maintain and sustain business cycles and so we need to keep on finding new sources of funding to buy raw materials. But, at the [SIYB] training we learned how to maintain proper book-keeping and separate out profits to keep the business operational. Also, in the past we had a tendency to saturate our target customer base and then struggled to scale up our business. In this context, the training we received on marketing was essential in learning how to avoid these mistakes and build our business models,” said Al Batool, who was successful in setting her own business after completion of the training..

Al Batool