Mai Taqatqa: Employs Social Entrepreneurship to Overcome COVID-19
Mai Taqtaqa is a Palestinian young woman entrepreneur. She is a mother of four children living in Beit Fajar in the governorate of Hebron in the south of West Bank. Mai holds B.A in architecture. She established her social enterprise in hand embroidery titled with “Art of Palestinian Original Heritage”. This social enterprise provides job opportunities to 40 women who could not continue their university educations or get employment due to hard living conditions. Working in this project suits their family conditions and qualifications by allowing them to work from home.
Mai had applied to “Tafawoq Youth Competition” which aims to support social entrepreneurial and business enterprises led by young people who aspire to improve their economic conditions and serve their communities. Mai and her partner won the competition, and their social enterprise was selected to be supported with a unrefunded grant through ActionAid Palestine (AAP) funded by Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. After that, Mai successfully participated in all training opportunities addressing issues of scientific and practical concepts and tools needed for establishing social enterprise. Italian and Palestinian specialists provided Mai and her partner with the technical support according to the needs of their enterprise. Innovative and effective solutions and tools were utilized due to positive changes they create in the lives and communities of female young social entrepreneurs.
Mai leads a social enterprise aiming to add aesthetic features to clothes and accessories by combining the elements of modernity with the traditional Palestinian embroidery. Mai is responsible for marketing embroidery products in the local and international markets and participating in local and regional markets. Those products are produced by 40 dedicated women who work in this social enterprise that positively impacted their lives by increasing their income, self-confidence enabling them to make decisions concerning their lives and family members. It also decreased the rate of unemployment among the most vulnerable young women during COVID-19. Mai expressed her happiness towards this developed enterprise that employed 40 women saying : “ I feel happy when I see that women I work with have become productive and active in the community and able to achieve their economic independence, provide their families and secure university education for their children”.
Mai highlighted some changes that her social enterprise created: “I have a permanent source of income allowing me to build a house for my family and overcome feelings of fears and worry about the future of my family. Activities of this project helped me to utilize my time. In addition, it strengthened my self-confidence and persistence to continue working and gaining new knowledge and experiences in the field of embroidery”.
Mai has gained a good reputation among customers and traders and she has now a large number of customers and commercial relations seeking to buy more of her embroideries. Mai has been affected by COVID-19 crisis after its outbreak in Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) by being unable to deliver products to markets and customers due to lockdown resulting from the spread of the virus. This situation has encouraged her to search for innovative solutions to overcome this crisis and started inserting embroidery on face masks that are widely used during this pandemic. Therefore, Mai communicated with specialist delivery companies when lockdown is mitigated to deliver her goods to customers and she greatly depended on social media for marketing”.
Mai aspired to develop her enterprise saying: “I wish to be able to market my products in the international markets to raise awareness of the world about the Palestinian Heritage through embroidery. I wish I could employ many vulnerable women”. Mai emphasized the importance of searching for sustainable livelihoods seeking to establish small business according to the needs of the market and create sustainable solutions to community problems that include creating job opportunities to unemployed women.
Social entrepreneurship is defined as recognition of social problems that could be solved through the use of the principals of entrepreneurship in creating, organizing, and managing enterprises to make social changes and fulfill community needs. Social entrepreneurship usually seeks to promote many social, cultural and environmental goals as poverty eradication, health care and community development.
Background Information
ActionAid in Palestine (AAP) is a part of global federation working for social justice and gender equality and eradicate poverty in more than 45 countries around the world. AAP started its work in Palestine in 2007 to strengthen the resilience of Palestinian People as ActionAid believes that they should enjoy their rights to freedom, justice and self-determination. AAP implements a number of programs through its engagement with communities and women and youth groups seeking to empower them and enhance their influential civil and political participation to understand their rights and undertake collective activism to address the protracted rights violations resulting from the prolonged occupation of Palestine. AAP works simultaneously to enhance their leadership capacity and knowledge to practice their citizenship in holding authorities and other duty bearers to account.
For more information, please contact
Riham Jafari
Coordinator of Advocacy and Communication in Palestine
Mobile:
+972 (0) 595242890
Office:
+972 (0) (2) 22 13 137
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