Women in Syria have  faced great challenges and difficulties, but they have been able to prove their ability to adapt to the circumstances the country is going through, and to overcome some challenges through their mastery of work at times, and their determination to succeed in any experience they undertake at other times.

"Work does not stop in a person’s life at a certain age. I retired from my job at the Syrian Telecom Company several years ago, but I remained active and managed to  establish a small project on  hand embroidery and knitting wool” Nawal Azzam from the village of Ta’ara in the countryside of Sweida told SANA.

 Azzam or Umm Nayef, as she is called, recounted how she has been  fascinated to   handicrafts since her childhood and had previously worked on a knitting machine in conjunction with her job, indicating that she had thought before her retirement of a project she started with a small capital  using simple tools including  needle and thread to embroider pillows and  bags as well as knitting shawls, table covers , clothes and various woolen items.

According to the sixty-eight-year-old Umm Nayef , her project started in a workshop at  her home and then expanded to a workshop in the city of Sweida, which currently provides about 40 job opportunities for women who are in need of work as they are the only  breadwinners for their families .

She indicated that the women work at their home and she  provides them with a model of the required designs and  the raw materials.

The   lady  is  very active and ambitious as she works herself hard, provides  job opportunities and trained about 400  women in the field of embroidery , who were  displaced from other governorates due to the war conditions against Syria  in addition to training women at  the Youth Empowerment Center during the last period.

Umm Nayef markets the products of her project, which she named after her granddaughter Naya, through her relatives and  friends, social media  and participation in local exhibitions in addition to starting marketing outside Syria.

The Syrian lady’s ambitions are unlimited despite her age as  she seeks  to expand the scope of her project, increase marketing ,  sell her products, and leave a distinctive imprint to realizes  the great effort exerted  to accomplish and deliver the products  to those  who are interested in handicrafts .

Rawaa Ghanam