Since its inception, the Damascus Chamber of Commerce Center for Entrepreneurship has supported 54 distinct projects

With the aim of supporting new ideas and innovative marketing initiatives for entrepreneurial thinking, creating enterprises, and coordinating with all public and private agencies to make this trend work, as well as supporting entrepreneurs, the Damascus Chamber of Commerce attracts and supports micro – enterprises through the Damascus Chamber of Commerce Center for Entrepreneurship.

In a statement to SANA, the Director of the Centre, Muhammad Naasani, said, ” The Chamber of Commerce has embraced since the beginning of the project’s announcement in 2019 to date 54 projects and provided them with a one-year, free-trade record with a 50 percent discount on the courses held by the Chamber. It also provided a place to work, including telephone, fax, e-mail, computer, advice, and ongoing guidance services through a specialized scientific cadre from the Chamber in the areas of marketing, finance and sales, as well as facilitating administrative procedures.

Naasani indicated that every six months, the Chamber announces its willingness to support youth projects through its media platforms and receives between 200 and 300 projects each time. Some 23 projects are selected to be presented to a competent committee of traders, economists and academics from different disciplines, “Economy and informatics,” who will select a maximum of eight projects to be incubated by the Chamber during the course of the session.

He stressed  the Chamber’s endeavor to coordinate between the Syrian Chambers of Commerce so that the incubators can take advantage of incubation features in all the provinces.

Shaker Majzoub, one of the current incubators of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce at its fifth and current session, talked about the importance of this experience, which helped him implement his project by providing care, attention and facilities by the Chamber, especially the workplace. He clarified that his project is based on monitoring agricultural fields through remote sensing techniques and providing a risk sensing service for agricultural lands and notifying farmers of it.

Nermin Qlaih noted that the Chamber had embraced her project at its current session, and thanks to the support provided to her, she was able to start an agricultural extension-training center that would create outstanding economic cultural thinking by offering several products and vocational training services in agriculture to young people and female breadwinners.

A number of projects incubated in the Chamber’s previous sessions achieved success in the labor market, including the project to establish a “smart window” service application, an accounting software project, and a project to teach deaf people and develop their skills to engage in the labor market.

The Chamber created the “Damascus Chamber of Commerce Center for Entrepreneurship” as one of the objectives of promoting the community and development participation for business support organizations, aimed  to support the culture of entrepreneurship, self-employment and encourage innovative ideas in the field of trade, industry and services among the youth segment, particularly from the business community in Damascus.

Amal Farhat