Al-Dadla: Making a living of traditional Palestinian embroidered dresses
By/ Salem Elrayyes
Inside her one bedroom home in Shatai Camp near the shore, Nabila Al-Dadla sits smiling behind her sewing machine turning traditionally embroidered fabrics into elegant Palestinian women wear.
Al-Dadla has a partial physical impairment. She learned to sew 20 years ago in a shop for a local organization. She perfected the craft and started working on her own after 7 years along with recovering a diploma in sewing.
Over the past years, she worked with a group of young girls on embroidery and sewing. She trained them well and now they work with to her to finish individual and institutional client’s orders, those looking for professionally made embroidered dresses.
Nabila was wise in tackling many of the problems she faced over the years. She started dreaming of expanding her business and her clients list as well as promoting her handmade wear, like dresses and shawls on a large scale and to different age groups.
Nabila’s friend talked to her one day about a small grant project targeting people with disabilities at the Social Developmental Forum. She applied for the project, “When I was chosen for the project, I tool it very seriously and decided to make the best of all aspects of the training”, Nabila commented.
She added, “We received training on administrative and financial skills development and learned social media marketing for our products”. She noted that she didn’t have much knowledge on these fields and only relied on simple accounting methods and her marketing was only done through her clients”
Following the two-week training with the Forum, Al-Dadla was chosen among the 50 persons with disabilities to take part in the “Step for Future” boot camp to work on their small business ideas with specialized personnel. In the end, 13 businesses were chosen for funding and Al-Dadla was among them.
Al-Dadla received the funding and immediately began to expand her business. “The funding enabled me to buy raw material, fabric, embroidery threads, and some small supplies. I started making embroidered pieces and advertising them on the Facebook and Instagram pages, which the Forum helped me set up.”, she said.
She noted that her business and clients’ expansion helps her lead a better life and afford her necessities. She is now a financially stable, independent business owner.
It is noted that the project “Supporting the efforts of persons with disabilities to contribute to positive social and economic empowerment in the Gaza Strip is implemented by the Social Development Forum with funding from the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).