Amal Soap

Amal is the story of a soap and hope gathering European dreamers and Syrian women. A social business that aims to integrate and empower Syrian women in their new communities by producing homemade soaps

Imagine leaving your home. Integration in your new place is your main concern. You want to create a new home. But how to communicate without speaking the local language? How to act if your values, principles and traditions do not match the local ones? You have hope! You have Amal (hope in Arabic)! You may say that we are dreamers. But, we are convinced that providing a job that respects traditions will enhance integration and fulfillment.

Amal is the story of young European entrepreneurs meeting Syrian women. We aim at building a bridge between our two cultures. We want to create a new community through soaps!

Soap? Yes! Amal Soap is inspired by the centenary Aleppo soap industry, enabling these women to reattach to their traditions. Adding to that, it is 100% natural, gently handmade with olive and laurel oil. Recommended for a wide range of skin types due to its gentle blend and anti-inflammatory properties. Don’t tell anyone, but it was Cleopatra's best kept skincare secret!

 Meaning hope in Arabic, Amal aims to empower these women to give them a new start and a smooth integration process. Our motto is indeed " Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime". Our purpose is to have them financially independent, socially integrated and above all hopeful about the future.

 Thus,our project is based on a social business fair trade company that through our skills and knowledge sharing will enable us to have both financial sustainability and independence whilst catalysing social impact, by providing jobs to the beneficiaries, the Syrian women.

We will start by working in Lisbon, in Portugal, with three Syrian women, who arrived some months ago and are willing to make this project real. One of them is called Maysa and she can’t wait to begin this journey. Their children are also impatient and curious to see what will happen next. With their energy, determination and how-know, we are motivated to go ahead, counting also with the support of the incubator Canopy and other advisors. Our goal is to scale then to France and Italy as soon as possible.

Family is the core

About the author

This adventure started with the 3 co-founders trying to solve a social challenge in their master course of Social Entrepreneurship. Then BET24 showed up in our way and we embraced it. We have won the social challenge and we started adding valuable assets to the team. All together we will make this happen!

Michele [Co-founder,Strategy]: Amal for Michele is not only hope for this project, but also for a world where businesses and social purposes will join and enhance the overall well-being of its inhabitants, and itself. He is dreaming to be a social entrepreneur very soon, while fulfilling his passions by travelling, doing free climbing, and living in Portugal.

Benedita [co-founder, Communication and P&R]: Benedita, more known as Benny, is passionate about Asia, hiking, tea and travel adrenaline. She is taking her master in Management with a major in Social Enterprise because she dreams about an impact career, which is why she co-funded Amal Soap. She wants to create opportunities to people to provide a stable live for their families.

Lauranne [Co-founder, Marketing]: “L’espoir fait vivre“ - “Hope is what makes us live”. Who knows Lauranne knows this proverb. Whatever is the situation, tricky or unrealistic, oppressive or uncertain, she always hopes or gives hope. Volunteering in a refugee center opened ,even more, her eyes and determined her to utilize her skills and experiences in sustainability management and marketing for the benefit of people in need. The Amal adventure concretized her debt owed toward the amazing Kurdish she met.

Duarte [ Sourcing and Materials]: Everyday Duarte tries to make the world a little bit better. Whether in the scouts, in therapeutic equitation or anywhere else he always looks for the simple things that he can give free of charge, like a smile or a friendly talk. Duarte is currently finishing his degree in Industrial Engineering and Management. He hopes that his know-how proves useful for the concretization of this beautiful idea in form of soaps!

Pedro [Operations]: Pedro is addicted to sports, nature and people. He wants to take part in a lot of projects related to social causes since he understands that there are too many social problems to solve out there. He is finishing his Engineering master and he is using his skills towards the success of this project.

Rita [Financial Management]: Rita is a peculiarly ordinary, dreamily realistic, cheerfully driven, masters student that aims to foster change (and smiles!) in the world. Full of wanderlust and with a distinct sense of humour, she balances her nerdy and ambitious, number lover side with hopes of an impact and meaningful career.

Budget and due dates

About our pilot

• work with 3 refugees in the Municipality of Cascais

Current costs structure (3000€)

• Video and design
• Technical consultancy on the cosmetic industry
• Website
• Materials and Transport

Timeline

• June 2017: Crowdfunding + partnership deals
• July 2017: Beginning of the production
• September 2017: Beginning of the distribution
• October 2017: Potential attendance to IES bootcamp

Images