Samira

Samira married young and gave up her dream of finishing school. She became a wife and mother of four. When she told people she wanted to start a business, they pushed back. “Society was against me,” she remembers. “They thought that a woman and a housewife can’t go out to the outside community and prove herself.” She did it anyway.

She joined EFE-Jordan’s entrepreneurship training, where she learned to build a business plan, study a market, and run the numbers. Then she walked the Mafraq market with free samples, asking strangers for honest feedback. Money was tight, and many neighbors didn’t yet know peanut butter could help with health issues like iron deficiency.

Nine years later, her brand, Super Peanut, comes in four flavors and sells across Jordan. A team of ten works alongside her. She even turns peanut waste into organic fertilizer, which she now sells too.

The business paid for her own education and her children’s. And the community that doubted her? “Now all the women in my society are thinking how to start a project like mine and do the same.”Samira has trained 20 Syrian women, as well as Jordanian women and men from across the country. “Every time I finish a training, one of the women tells me, ‘I’ve started my own business!’ That fills me with so much joy.”

Next, she dreams of guesthouses and a factory that creates jobs for Jordanians and refugees alike. “Whether someone is a refugee or a native, we’re all human, and we should support one another.”Her advice: “Start with a small step but with great confidence. Don’t wait for perfect circumstances; create them yourself.”