My name is Nivin Kamal Dawood, and I come from a middle-class family. My husband works as a sales representative for a food sales company, specializing in selling frozen goods.My family is simple, consisting of six members: my husband, myself, three sons, and one daughter. I felt a great sense of responsibility towards my family and home, especially with my husband’s limited income. With the economic fluctuations and the difficult changes the world is going through, along with the increasing expenses for basic needs for myself and my family, I started seriously thinking about starting a small business to help contribute to improving my family’s income and to cope with the rising cost of essential needs for every household.I thought a lot about the type of business I could start and decided to work in selling beauty tools and cleaning products. I started my business by opening a small shop for selling beauty tools and cleaning products. However, I faced some problems, such as:First, my lack of experience in managing the business, including purchasing products and finding the best sources for buying, pricing products before selling, the sales process, and negotiating with customers. Second, the limited working capital.I started feeling frustrated and thought the business was heading towards loss and shutting down, especially as I was using the business money to cover my personal expenses. After a short period, I started feeling bored with the project due to the many burdens it caused.At that time, I heard from one of my neighbors about the ‘Women of Gold’ project, implemented by the ‘The Key to Life’ Association, funded by the Egyptian-Italian Diwan Exchange Program. I attended the orientation session for the project at the association’s headquarters in Al-Maris village. At first, I thought this project only offered loans, but through the orientation, I discovered that it offers many services, including several training sessions. One of them was entrepreneurship training, which taught how to manage a business.I applied for the project and received the training. One of the most valuable sessions was the life skills training, where I learned how to invest my time, the essential skills for managing my business, how to communicate with the public, and how to present and sell products. This training lasted for two days.After that, I received an advanced entrepreneurship training for three days, where I realized I knew little about business, feasibility studies, and how to calculate the project’s costs. The most important thing that impacted me was separating my business portfolio from my personal one, and this had a direct effect on my monitoring of the project.Next, I was trained on sales and marketing. This was the turning point for me. In this training, I learned a lot about marketing, and the difference between digital and traditional marketing.I then received a loan from the association and applied what I had learned in the training to my business, and the results were remarkable. The business started to generate profits, and the impact of the project began to show in various aspects of my life.I began to feel financially independent, as I no longer needed to ask my husband for money when I wanted to go out. With my income, I could cover my own needs without relying on anyone.The success of my project has had a visible impact on my children as well, as I started meeting their needs and requirements without needing to borrow money from others
