At the end of April, Sahara Partners launched its Business Internship Program. After a visit from a group of college business students, an idea sparked to start a practical, hands-on training opportunity for the women in the Saharawi refugee resettlement camps. The initial launch of the program will start with a month-long intensive training for a group of women representing the three neighborhoods of the local camp where we work. These women will learn how to start a business by opening and operating a secondhand children’s clothing and toy store. After taking a break for the summer months, the first full cohort of women will begin training in the fall of 2022, and women will study the entire eight-month curriculum. The following fall, a new cohort of women will be trained.

The women’s training program centers around a small shop, centrally located, where the women will be selling used children's clothing and toys. The shop opened a few days before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, occurring at the end of the month of Ramadan. The used clothing market is an underdeveloped niche in the refugee camps because of the difficulty in obtaining reliable access to trading routes.

Each woman participating in the program will be expected to help with all the components of the business, such as: bookkeeping, marketing, product layout, and more. At the start of each week, the women receive training about a specific business topic and are tasked to put the lesson into practice that week at the shop. At the end of the week, a follow-up training session reviews how the practical application of the lesson learned in the first session went. An additional component of the training has the women beginning to develop a business plan for a future business idea. The goal of the internship is to help educate women in business literacy, to encourage and develop their confidence in starting a business, and to provide employment that can lead to savings towards start-up capital for their own future business endeavor.

The curriculum of the program is specifically adapted for the context of the refugee camps and includes a wholistic view of business. Each week there are dialogues about difficult moral decisions that have to be made in the marketplace, the influences of social spheres and cultural obligations, and the part that religion plays on best business practices. The interns were chosen based on recommendations from local leaders and the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Advancement of Women. The selection process takes into consideration women who are economically under-resourced and are also motivated, dedicated, available, and desire to start their own businesses.

Take the example of Aya,* who is the middle child of three sisters. Since her oldest sister is still unmarried, her own marriage is not likely to happen in the near future. After the death of her father, her family has had greater difficulty in making ends meet. She is gifted with numbers but was never able to finish her studies beyond high school because of family obligations. She is an example of an eager candidate for the business internship, and she hopes that after eight months of learning, she will be able to open her own shop selling traditional women's clothing as a way to help support her family.

The goal of the Sahara Partners’ Business Internship Program is to equip and empower women like Aya* to sustainably develop their own community.

*Not her real name