Eman Wagdy

Egypt

Eman and her realised dream touch 800 Egyptian families.

April 9, 2020 started as a normal day for Eman. She prepared for meetings, gave tasks to her work team, and inspected the high demand on “Alfarazah” products.

But before she had finished writing the last line of her daily journal… her phone rang:

“Eman, we’re calling from the One Million Arab Coders initiative. We have finished auditing projects in the digital innovation competition, and you are among the winners of a $50,000 prize for your project “Alfarazah”. Congratulations”!

Eman said: “I wiped the tears of joy and turned the page. This day deserves to be written again”.

Eman goes back to a memory from more than two years ago, after giving birth to her second child, when she wanted to find an outlet for her dreams. There was something missing in her journey of a thousand miles.

“I wanted to help women around me in online marketing for all the products they created in their homes. Our idea was simple and I started it with my husband and a group of friends.

We started by collecting information and data and marketing manually. The project was moving slowly and faced some obstacles. I remember well the day that I read about the importance of data collection and analysis, as if it were a cornerstone for the success of what we want to achieve. At the same moment, I decided to search for the topic and dig deeper.

Then, I decided to find online courses to teach myself what I needed to know. An article caught my attention: the One Million Arab Coders Initiative, written by a graduate student whose enthusiasm was contagious.

I entered the site and found the Data Analysis course. I could not believe it was free. After that, I knew this was a big step toward achieving our dreams and the support that we had been missing. It was almost dawn, I registered in the initiative and went to sleep”.

Today, after obtaining an approved certificate in the data analysis course, Eman – a graduate of the Faculty of Language – is well known as a female coder who has been able to transfer a simple project idea into a career that supports more than 800 Egyptian women.

“Alfarazah” is a project that trains women to prepare, market and sell household products throughout Egypt. Today, Eman intends to further develop her project and says: My “$50,000 prize is for every Egyptian woman and I hope you will reach us, inshallah. We will enlarge our project and you will grow with us”.