The family shop goes into crisis
Bashar inherited his grocery store from his father, in the city of Baniyas in Syria. The connection with this business is therefore not a
purely economic factor, it is also a question of family memory . The man has spent many years sitting among the products to sell, and many Syrian crises he has seen pass before his eyes. There was, however, a time when the shop just wasn’t going well, few customers were able to buy anything, and consequently very little merchandise on the shelves because he no longer had any revenue to invest: “I tried everything to keep it afloat – says Bashar – but I couldn’t do it” . He was losing hope, and he didn’t even have the strength to open that door every day. He often stayed home.
The change of direction in Baniyas
When Bashar tells his story he is sitting inside his shop in a neighborhood of Baniyas, the shelves are full of food products waiting to be sold. There was a moment when something changed . What? He himself answers: ” RestarT has turned things around. It gave me the support to strengthen my business and I got the desire to work back.”
In fact, Bashar has become one of the protagonists of the RestarT program, with which the AMU in Syria supports small entrepreneurial or commercial activities. RestarT helped the man to buy the goods to sell and since then the smile has also re-emerged on the face of the owner of the business, who has thrown himself headlong into this professional rebirth : “The shop has become my obsession, now I can count on an income, part of which I use to continually fill the shelves and diversify the merchandise , so the customer knows that he can find anything with me: this is considered my strong point”.
Forward, despite the difficulties
There is no shortage of difficulties here in Baniyas, but the spirit with which Bashar faces them is no longer the same. The lack of electricity is an obstacle that everyone in Syria has to deal with: “To overcome this problem, in the future I would like to use solar energy to power the refrigerators. I am sure that this will also have a positive impact on income.”
Without forgetting reciprocity
With his income significantly improving and his shop reviving, Bashar doesn’t want to leave anyone behind in Baniyas. He is grateful for the support of RestarT , without which the business he inherited from his father might have been lost: “I am happy, but now I in turn try to help as much as possible anyone I know who needs help.” How does he do it? “If there is a family whose economic situation is not good, I only charge the cost price of the product, I don’t care about the profit.”
