In its issue of today, L’Orient Le Jour highlighted the wide success achieved by the documentary, ‘Sufra’, portraying the life of the Palestinian refugee, Mariam Shaar, a Borj Barajneh Camp resident. The film depicts the entrepreneur’s struggle to overcome the challenges to set up her special catering and food truck business, ‘Sufra’ and expand it with a group of female refugees within the camp. To recall, the documentary, produced by American actress and feminist activist, Susan Sarandon, was screened in Beirut on Monday in the presence of Sarandon. Shaar, who grew up in Borj Barajneh refugee camp (housing around 50,000 Palestinian refugees), wanted to study journalism to write about the predicaments of marginalised groups. The precarious economic situation of her family, however, forced her to drop out of high school in search for work. Shaar worked for 10 years as a kindergarten teacher, and at the same time volunteered in the administrative work at the UN agency operating within the camp. In 2006, she was offered the position of president of the Women Program Association, active in the camp, which was the first turning point in her entire life. Shaar sought to help women inside Borj Barajneh camp trying to find them convenient jobs. But in 2012, she was introduced to the venture philanthropy organisation, Alfanar, which backed her in launching Sufra catering whose compelling success prompted Sarandon to produce a film about it. Noting, that Sufra today recruits more than 30 women in the catering business. (L’Orient Le Jour, March 6, 2019)
