Beneficiary: Nina Beidoun
Fund Date: 11/2019
Age: 52 years old
Family members: 3
Perseverance is something that often comes in one’s personality, it surfaces in the darkest moments of the broken and overwhelmed person, Nina Beidoun has it both in her heart and her mind.
Nina, the 48-years-old woman chose to be in the tailoring and fashion design domain, from a young age it was her passion. She pursued her dream and entered a famous and specialized fashion designing institute in Lebanon, and graduated to return home and fulfill her dreams.
What Nina chose as her career wasn’t far from her family business, her brother used to own a cloth manufacturing factory in Al-Sheikh Najjar, which gave Nina the perfect space to design, tailor, and master her profession. However, Nina went beyond that and started teaching fashion design in a local institute and as well as giving private lessons.
She was at the peak of her professional life when the war started in 2012, everything went down the drain so suddenly. Al-Sheikh Najjar became under the armed groups control. They lost their factory which was a hard hit for the family, but it wasn’t the only unfortunate incident, Nina’s house was hit by mortar shells twice, and she had to repair it by herself, while her parents were in their hometown (Al-Jdaydeh village) near Idleb, where they are also suffering from the armed groups confiscating properties and kidnapping civilians, in fact her father was kidnapped several times in order to force him leave his house and land, but it only made the old man even more determined to stay and fight for his existence.
Today, Nina works from her own house, and instead of doing unique “haute couture” pieces or collaborate with fashion designers like she used to, she is barely making a living from daily clients and occasional orders; like making uniforms for medical scrubs. The problem is in the shortage of the sewing machines that Nina owns, in addition to the lack of a convenient place to welcome the clients is a huge obstacle in Nina’s way.
To overcome those hardships, she needs a stitching and sewing machines, in addition to a pressed ironing machine and some relevant equipment to improve her work. Nina believes that having these tools and dedicating a room in her house to become her work place, and a place for client’s fit rehearsals, all this would make a huge difference in her career and income.