I considered myself an entrepreneur at the age of 15, when I set up shop on the cobblestone streets across my dad’s apartment on the island of Lefkada, Greece, to sell stones I collected from local beaches and then decorated. Although it was a great idea, and surprisingly lucrative, it probably wasn’t groundbreaking enough to have become a featured story for a project like Jo’Preneurs, a new social initiative happening in Jordan.
Jo’Preneurs: Stories of Young Jordanian Entrepreneurs, officially initiated this year, has thus far created 15 documentaries, each highlighting the journey of an individual or a small group of entrepreneurs in realizing a dream come true.
Reflecting upon “their inspiration, their challenges, their execution, their drive, and their insight,” the featured entrepreneurs speak to the camera to tell the community about their business risk-taking, from personal standpoints.
The room setting or backdrop suits the style or product with which the entrepreneur identifies. For example, hanging behind Tamer al-Masri and Michael Makdah, the cofounders of a T-shirt design company, as they talk are six different T-shirts bearing the duo’s own contemporary graphics.
Suleiman Bakhit, founder of Aranim Media Factory, speaks in front of a shelf housing some of the superheroes and action figures from his comics.
There are teasers of a handful of these documentaries currently on YouTube; non-Arabic speakers won’t understand but can at least get a sense for the presentation of the documentaries.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHq5WlI8zPY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwR2FBCbKBs[/youtube]
Credit for Jo’Preneurs goes to the creator and director, Shadi A. Eideh, and the producer, Lara Al-Safadi. Jo’Preneurs is not meant to be simply a platform for sharing success stories of Jordanian entrepreneurs; it dares others to refuse to let great ideas slip away and instead do something about them. As the slogan goes, “They did it. You can too.”
Image of man with light bulb head from Shutterstock
Author: Kelly Vaghenas
A recent graduate of Montclair State University, where she double majored in Dance and Anthropology and minored in Arabic, Kelly loves exploring cultural and performing arts, learning foreign languages, cooking healthy food, and frequenting her favorite ethnic restaurants. Her wanderlust keeps her intent on traveling the world, and starting in the summer of 2011 during her trip to Lebanon, CouchSurfing became her way of finding free accommodation and new friends. She is obsessed with Pinkberry frozen yogurt and, after recently discovering that the majority of the chain's international locations are in the Middle East, is determined to place an order at every counter in the region during her lifetime...
