Ayat Arar is a 39-year-old widow, her husband was murdered by the Israeli forces 17 years ago. She is a mother of two daughters and one son living in Qarawah Bani Zeid village northwest of Ramallah. Ayat is the only financial provider of her children and has only obtained her primary education. She works in making pastries and kubbeh at home and used to work in making sweets. Her business in sweet making has failed, and she stopped making sweets long time ago. Many reasons contributed to the failure of her sweet-making business including financial and social reasons. The transportation to bring raw materials for sweets was a financial burden for her. Moreover, as a widow living in a village, Ayat has encountered several social and economic challenges that impeded the continuity of her business in sweet making, such as restrictive social norms that made it difficult for her to move freely from her village to the city.

After participating at Asala’s financial t... Read more

Ayat Arar is a 39-year-old widow, her husband was murdered by the Israeli forces 17 years ago. She is a mother of two daughters and one son living in Qarawah Bani Zeid village northwest of Ramallah. Ayat is the only financial provider of her children and has only obtained her primary education. She works in making pastries and kubbeh at home and used to work in making sweets. Her business in sweet making has failed, and she stopped making sweets long time ago. Many reasons contributed to the failure of her sweet-making business including financial and social reasons. The transportation to bring raw materials for sweets was a financial burden for her. Moreover, as a widow living in a village, Ayat has encountered several social and economic challenges that impeded the continuity of her business in sweet making, such as restrictive social norms that made it difficult for her to move freely from her village to the city.

After participating at Asala’s financial training, Ayat was inspired to start making sweets again, as she improved her skills and abilities to help her business in sweet making thrive again. She learned how to better manage her project, calculate profit and loss, and how to study her competitors. She was also motivated by the gender training to challenge social norms in order to grow her business.

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