FAO/Mazen Haffar

Flexibility, consistency and knowledge are the key ingredients for Amina’s success. She is a true lead example for other women in her village in Deir Ez-Zor as she thrived her way to make a better life for her family, giving the fact that she is the only breadwinner after her husband’s passing: “I have always believed in my abilities. The FAO ‘Nabta’ programme has provided me with skills and woken my potential. It prepared me to establish my business and equipped me with a solar panel and a refrigerator to start,” ” said Amina Al Salamah – Deir Ez-Zor.

Being a single mother of six was the motivation for Amina to decide to try and improve her life.  She had been making a better life as a small-business owner providing orders to customers in other governorates in Syria: “The dairy production business I established has been covering my family’s expenses. I used to depend on my cow’s milk and tailoring, besides depending on humanitarian aid. I never wanted to have to rely on aid, so I decided to make a change,” she said.

Amina had been wondering about dairy production for some time. She has the skills to produce cheese, ghee and yogurt, however, the only equipment she had was a milk separator, yet she needed a refrigerator and a solar panel to sustain the equipment’s operations in a cost-effective manner. This is when she learned about ‘Nabta’ programme-– FAO’s flagship agri-preneur training programme: “Although I aimed at finding funds to purchase the needed equipment, ‘Nabta’ also provided the essential skills to manage my business. I learned about calculating inputs and pricing, and products promotion, this training was a real life changer for me!” said Aminah.  

Today, Amina influences other women with her flexible negotiation skills that paved her way to make deals with her relatives and neighbors to buy between 20 to 30 liters milk on a daily basis, in order to produce yogurt, cheese and ghee. Furthermore, Amina, with the help of her children, promotes the products using Facebook and WhatsApp.

FAO’s Nabta programme is a specialized agri-preneur scheme that empowers rural women and youth to establish and lead their agri-businesses, and to become resilient, problem solvers and creative thinkers against any challenge.

Within the UN Joint Programme, funded by the EU, Norway and Italy, FAO supported 478 people in Deir Ez-Zor and Daraa governorates with business skills, while 46 were selected to receive grants to start their own agri-businesses. They were selected based on solid criteria, including the presence of market assessment and plan, the beneficiary’s experience, proposed creative solutions, and the durability of their plan.

The UN Joint Programme on Rural and Urban Resilience builds on the comparative advantage of the six participating UN agencies–FAO, UNDP, UNFPA, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, and WFP–under the leadership of the UN Resident Coordinator to provide integrated responses to multi-faceted resilience challenges in Syria.