Medina Asiresie, a 28-years-old woman from Mersa, a mother of three boys and a passionate individual who transformed her life after participating in the soft skills training provided by the Development Expertise Center (DEC) in collaboration with UN Women.
Before joining the program, Medina faced many challenges. With a limited educational background and being an unemployed migrant returnee, she felt stuck and uncertain about her future. Her journey began when she registered at her local Kebele as an unemployed returnee in search of any available opportunities. Feeling hopeful, she underwent the necessary verification process with community government stakeholders.
The training provided by DEC opened her eyes to possibilities she had never considered. The three-day Life Skills and Vision Development program gave her a strong foundation for self-improvement. During the sessions, she learned the importance of self-awareness, goal setting and creating a Personal Development Plan (PDP). Medina developed her PDP with the ambition of becoming self-employed and owning a small shop nears her parent’s home.
She later joined the Entrepreneurship training, where she gained valuable skills such as assessing her strengths, taking calculated risks, mobilizing resources, saving and starting small. She realized that she had untapped resources around her that she had never fully appreciated before. Her supportive husband, her families and her relatives were all assets that could help to achieve her dream.
Two weeks after completing her training, Medina borrowed 220,000 from her relatives and she opened a small shop in front of her parent’s home. The business quickly became successful, generating a steady daily income of around 2,000 birr. She has already paid off 52,600 birr of her initial loan and her business continues to grow.
She hopes to expand her business and eventually turn it into a full-scale supermarket that offers a wide variety of goods and services to her community.
Her message to fellow returnees:
“Be yourself, wake up, and assess your surroundings. There are so many opportunities around us that we may not see until we take action. With Allah’s help, everything will get better. I am living proof of that and my family and I are now experiencing joy in our lives.”
