A conversation with Omar; Amala alumnus, entrepreneur, filmmaker and advocate
“I believe education has the power to change and the capacity to unlock every issue in the world.” - Omar
Omar graduated from the Amala High School Diploma in May 2022 as part of our second cohort in Amman, Jordan. He is a keen entrepreneur who has dedicated the last few years to finding solutions to the many issues facing refugee communities. Through the Amala Diploma, Omar has recognised the importance of education as a solution, he believes that “education is the password to the future.”
Omar at the screening of the Abia, the film he worked on (October 2022)
Omar, and his cohort two Amala classmate, Asrar, was recently involved in the making of Abia, a film with Generations For Peace and Cinemagic which brings forward issues surrounding the refugee crisis and gender-based violence. He hopes to utilise the skills and experiences he gained on set to continue to raise awareness on the domestic and social violence experienced by many, particularly women and children.
His passion for finding solutions to humanitarian issues extends to his end goal of scaling his e-commerce company that he started with his brother, and formed his Personal Interest Project on the Amala Diploma. Together they hope to establish the production centre in Somalia, bringing jobs and business to the Somali economy.
We met with Omar to understand more about his goals and motivations as he works to create positive change in his community and beyond.
Tell us about your experience at Amala. Have you changed since you started the High School Diploma?
Prior to Amala, I knew that I was able to learn anything but I didn’t have plans to go to school. Then in 2019, I said I was going back to Somalia because I don’t want to stay here in Jordan, but then my friend told me to apply for Amala. Before Amala I didn’t do very much, but now, after two years it changed everything. Now all I want to do is study, study, study. I wish I could erase my name from the Cohort 2 list so I could start the programme again and study with Amala again.
Do you still keep in contact with your classmates and the Amala community?
Yes, I’m still very involved with Amala. Even now I’m in the Amala facilities in Jordan, and so I still see Fatima, the Coordinator from Jordan, and my first facilitator around. After the course I’ve been coming here every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. It’s great to see other students from different cohorts. I have a very good relationship with Cohort 3, almost like I’m a big brother, and I encourage them to be the best cohort of Amala. Also I told my older brother to go to Amala. I knew he had other projects and he was telling me doesn’t have a lot of time, like right now he’s studying economics, but I told him to go regardless. Then he applied to Amala and now he told me he wished I’d told him about this before. He’s in the third cohort and he’s doing great things.
“Amala is like a bridge to knowledge, to the world, to everything really. We have all sorts of people, from Ghana, from Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Sudan, that come into this shared space to connect and learn from each other, and who respect without prejudice for religion, ethnicity, whatever. We are all here to learn and we belong to Amala because of that.”
Tell me about your Personal Interest Project. What inspired it? Did you face any challenges along the way?
Omar presenting on his PIP
Well, my first PIP idea was related to FGM; but I was scared to do it because it’s a dangerous topic because it goes against the political agenda of Jordan. So I changed my PIP, and decided to do my project with my brother instead, even if at the time he wasn’t with Amala yet. We started an e-commerce store. The idea came during Corona, when I wanted to find a gift for my brother’s fiancée. The problem was we couldn’t find any cultural Somali gifts that could be shipped to us. For example we have something called a dirac, a traditional dress worn at special occasions, like weddings, which cannot be ordered from abroad. There was no e-commerce store from Somalia that did anything like that, so we decided to create one. There is definitely demand, as there are many Somalis that live abroad, for example would you believe there are 150,000 Somalis living in the US alone? So imagine if all these people can easily go online and ask for what they want and it’s brought to their house, like Alibaba or Amazon. That became my project, creating a platform to sell cultural Somali clothes globally.
So you did everything from building the online platform, to following through the design and production of the merchandise, to the business aspect?
Everything. We came up with the business idea, but we were also the designers. It helped that we divided the labour between us. I took up the more technical side, like I do website design, while my brother is good with stuff like communication and bringing in funds, although he also helped with the technical aspects, as he’s better than me at coding. We built everything from scratch. Now we also have created another website that’s going to be like the Somali equivalent of Airbnb or Booking. It’s going to be a big website in Somalia, because right now there’s no platform for renting houses or booking hotels.
And where did you learn the basics for business? Especially for your e-commerce business, how did you figure out how to get the products designed and made?
Since we were children we’ve been surrounded by business. Our family would sell everything, oil, medical supplies, etc. so the business and economics aspect came from our family in Somalia. We also took some courses on the EU Academy platform.
In terms of figuring out the product, we contacted people from India and Pakistan to assemble the clothing, or anything else we need. They bring it to Dubai. We want to sell everything from Dubai, and build a store and sell internationally from there. But this is just the beginning. It’s the first business in Somalia that sells internationally, so there is no established infrastructure that manufactures clothes like this. It will take time, but we want to make a factory in Somalia to build our product domestically. A big part of the plan is to help the Somali economy and create jobs there.
That’s so impressive. Is giving back to Somalia a part of what makes the PIP personal?
Absolutely. I am interested in humanitarianism and humanity. I mean, imagine the circumstances we’re going through in Jordan, we’re refugees, yet we’re thinking like this. We have access to education, to everything and can do anything. It makes me sad that these people can’t do anything for their culture, for their community; my brother and I will. It’s the same motivation for my initial idea to address FGM, as it is a big problem in Somalia, in Sudan, in Egypt; such violence is very prevalent, in a lot of Arab countries especially. It’s something that severely affects the girls, and can even lead to death. There’s a lot of problems in Somalia, and they don’t care about this, so I want to make it big. However, after the Somali government visited my social media I got scared. I think that they don’t like that I was bringing attention to the issue, and I was scared of being banned from Somalia or something like that. But, I am planning to address the issue in the future, to push for the protection of children, girls, from FGM.
Tell us about the film you worked on. Does it also align with your work to address women’s rights?
Omar working on the film, Abia
It aligns with my initial concept for Abia, as I had hoped to make it about FGM; but our script and ideas were ignored, so my role was to learn. We had four months of formal training prior to filming and then we worked on set with professionals. I chose to work with lighting, because I know that’s the most important for the camera. After that, I also worked with the camera assistant people on another film in Jerash. It was a great experience. I learned how to write the script, manage the budget for the movie, how to talk to everyone involved, and how to contact the actors. It’s all very useful because now one of my projects is going to be a script about a girl facing FGM. I’m going to see if I can have it financed by UNHCR, and I’m going to work with the child protection section to see if they can give me stories and examples to keep the story true to its source.
“I never expected the huge level of improvement that I gained through education. I saw improvement in my life, in every aspect, it changed me. It changed me in every part of my body, every part of my brain, everything really. I really owe it to Amala because it showed me the real value of education.”
What would you like to share with everyone reading this?
You know a lot of people think that refugees are poor, that they have no prospects, or don’t think like humans. Multiple problems are related to this view. The word ‘refugee’ itself, keeps such people from being humanised; we don’t have a voice in many situations due to this refugee status. I believe education has the power to change that, and the capacity to unlock every issue in the world. It is the key, it changes everything, from the way that you think, to your awareness of what you do, what you want, and what you want to achieve. Education is the password to the future.
Find out more about the film Omar worked on below: