Training offers boost to home-based businesses

AMMAN — Although Um Emile has run a patisserie from her home for seven years, the professional training she recently received has helped her improve her products and reach more customers.

The Jordanian mother-of-two said she had always wanted to learn new baking and design techniques to boost sales, which she pursues through acquaintances and a Facebook page.

Through the aid agency Caritas, Um Emile enrolled in a training programme for food production businesses, where she honed her baking skills and learned new techniques, like printing edible photos to decorate cookies and cakes. 

“My old customers like the updated products and I was able to get new customers,” she told The Jordan Times on Monday at a home-based business fair in Amman, where she displayed a variety of baked goods.  

Um Emile is one of 120 beneficiaries of an EU-funded project, implemented by Caritas Jordan and Caritas Czech Republic, to help Syrian refugees and underprivileged Jordanians develop or establish home-based businesses. 

Across from Um Emile’s booth at the exhibition stood Alaa Ahmad, a Syrian refugee who learned knitting and soap making in a training workshop offered through the project.

She displayed wool scarves and hats she knitted and a variety of soaps in different shapes and colours.

“I wanted to learn these skills to help my family financially and try to contribute to the treatment costs of my war-wounded brother,” she told The Jordan Times, adding that these skills helped her fill her free time and feel more productive.

Speaking at the opening of the one-day exhibition, EU Ambassador to Jordan Andrea Matteo Fontana said the project had engaged some 1,200 Syrians and Jordanians in life skills and psychological support sessions. 

Around 250 people in Amman, Azraq, Balqa, Irbid, Madaba and Mafraq received intensive training to implement their business plans, and 120 of them were able to create home-based businesses, he said.

These businesses were established in various sectors, including cooking, baking, candle and soap making, sewing, beauty salons, perfume-making and accessories design, he noted.

Wael Suleiman, director general of Caritas Jordan, said the project was implemented in six areas across the country.

“The project is the fruit of our EU brethren and friends’ love and solidarity towards supporting Syrian and Jordanian families, enabling them to establish home-based businesses that are likely to restore hope to those who lost it,” he said at the opening of the  fair.

Speaking to The Jordan Times, Suleiman noted that Caritas programmes seek to help those in need regardless of their country of origin, adding that Jordanians comprise 30 per cent of the beneficiaries of this project and 50 per cent of all Caritas Jordan programmes.

The skills Syrians learn today will help them rebuild their country once the war is over, he added.

Bohumil Jirkal, deputy head of mission of the Czech embassy in Jordan, said the project, funded by a 1-million-euro grant from the EU, would not be the last project to encourage Syrian refugees and underprivileged Jordanians to start home-based businesses.

Each of the home-based projects is a story of resilience, he said, adding that Monday’s exhibition was a marketing opportunity for the businesses.