Talking with Maysa

Last month, we were invited by the organization Para Onde to participate in Refúgio Cultural, an event promoting intercultural experiences. Time Out magazine featured some of the participants on the event. Although there is just a small part of Maysa's interview published, you can see here the complete version of questions and answers! We were thrilled :)

How did you get to Lisbon? Where are you come from and why did you choose Portugal?

My name is Maysa, I come from Damascus, Syria. To be honest, I did not choose Portugal. My family and I got selected with the realocation program and the country choose for us happened to be Portugal. We did no mind it. We are very happy here and we like its people who try to help in any way they can

How did you come up with the idea of creating this project? Can you speak a little bit about it?

Once I was at the hospital to do a regular checkup since I was pregnant. I got the chance to meet Benedita who happens to be a friend of the guy who is responsible for our family here. She asked us to meet her again and she proposed th project. We were so happy with the idea of the project. Making Aleppo soap and selling it in Portugal is something to be proud of! It shows to people some of our culture

What is the main goal, what do you intend to achieve with the project you have created?

The main goal of this project is to make women integrate in the society as it is very hard for our men to work alone, so we need to help. Through this project we intend to make it bigger, not only selling it in Portugal but also in other European countries. The idea for us isn’t only selling this product and having stable income out of it, but most importantly is to show and let people know a bit about Syrian people and our culture because we do have beautiful things to share like any other nation