Mona Al Shbeeb, a 40-year-old Syrian woman, is a proud mother of 14-year-old Tuqa, living in Amman. She is known as Um Tuqa in her close circles. Um Tuqa and her daughter were living in Damascus, Syria, when a chemical shelling severely injured Tuqa in 2015, and mother and daughter fled to Jordan to seek medical treatment.
She struggled to stand on her own two feet for the first years they were in Jordan. But as soon as she was able, she started seeking occasional work opportunities to cover some of her family’s needs. With no family support, and a daughter with severe medical needs, having a regular stable income proved difficult. In 2019, she applied for and started receiving monthly cash assistance from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Um Tuqa is one of more than 120,000 refugees across host communities in Jordan who receive cash assistance thanks to the continued support of the European Union and other donors. This cash serves as a basic support mechanism for the most vulnerable refugee families and helps them meet their most basic needs, such as paying rent, putting food on the table or covering medical expenses, as is the case for Um Tuqa and her daughter. Most beneficiaries receive assistance via mobile wallets, which unlock additional business opportunities for refugees.
For Um Tuqa, using a mobile wallet also means having cash at hand, which she earns from her small business. Trained as a cosmetologist, she was working in a hair salon in Syria. In Jordan, she slowly found relief in cooking. Cooking became a project and a means to make a small income, as Um Tuqa began preparing and selling food to friends and neighbours. She now aspires to formalise her small business into an enterprise called “Shu Zaki”, which means “how delicious” in Arabic.
“I chose cooking because this is what we learned from our parents,” she said. “I made a connection between the Syrian, Jordanian and Palestinian cuisines. I mix them, and I come up with new dishes,” she added, explaining that she brings a personal touch to her food.
Along with over 60 per cent of the refugee families that received UNHCR’s cash assistance, Um Tuqa uses a mobile wallet. She signed up from the very beginning, and attended awareness and training sessions organised by UNHCR, in cooperation with partners, to familiarise refugees with the new tool.
“Mobile wallets not only help refugees meet their most basic needs, but also unlock tremendous opportunities for greater self-reliance in the future,”said UNHCR’s cash team leader, Mette Karlsen.
“It helps them to manage their finances and diversify their income through business creation,” Karlsen said.
Um Tuqa is a fan of mobile wallets and has been using the technology for making payments, in addition to receiving the cash assistance.
“It made my life so much easier because I don’t have to go anywhere to pay my bills,” she said. “I pay water, electricity and phone bills while sitting on my couch.”
Um Tuqa also uses her mobile wallet to receive payments in advance from clients that order food from her small business. Advance payments allow Um Tuqa to avoid financial losses that she faced in the past when clients abruptly cancelled orders after the food had already been prepared.
“My rights [as a vendor] are preserved,” she said.
Her daughter’s condition and medical needs limit the scale of Um Tuqa’s dreams for the future. Yet her enthusiasm and drive to grow her culinary project, along with her dedication to securing a future for Tuqa, who needs medical treatment and a liver transplant, motivate her to keep going.
“I’m determined to finish what I started; I want to add my own touch and create something that has never been done before.”