Jordan expat in Oman wins creativity award
The competition is based on helping the community by coming up with creative ideas that could benefit the community
MUSCAT: A Jordanian expatriate living in Oman has won Philadelphia’s ‘Creativity for a Cause’ competition held in the UAE. She talked exclusively to the Times of Oman about her winning idea and future plans.
Muna Zayed, a science and biology teacher from Al Ibdaa International School, participated in the competition for the second year and submitted her idea on creating well-wrapped gift baskets for anything and any occasion.
The competition is based on helping the community by coming up with creative ideas that could benefit the community.
“Many women don’t have a spouse, or the spouse cannot fully support the family, or cannot leave her house for one reason or another; whether due to restric- tions or kids. You also have people who are physically disabled and use a wheelchair; they can’t keep going out,” Muna said.
“So why can’t they produce and earn money like any other person in the community?” she added.
Her winning idea teaches women to make handicrafts from their own home, by wrapping inexpensive gift baskets and selling them to make a profit.
“My idea is to help them. Nowadays, people buy costly gifts and pay a lot for it to be perfectly presentable. So I make these baskets for wrapping gifts in a decent manner and at the same time, the cost is much less for the customer,” Zayed said.
“So instead of paying a large sum, you could pay half of what you would originally pay and, at the same time, have the satisfaction of having someone work, who isn’t working to start with,” she said.
Muna is ready to train any woman who is interested to learn the art of wrapping using any material creatively.
“After they have created their pieces, I will then market their creations and they will receive their share of the profit as well as my share to buy materials. They will make money for their creations,” she said.
Muna is currently looking for sponsors and supporters for her idea such as banks, goodwill foundations, and societies to send people who wish to learn the art, or supply materials for the handicrafts or provide market for her creations.
Women are encouraged to join her in learning the art of gift wrapping and they, too, will benefit from the project.
The Oman resident left the competition with over OMR5,000 in winnings and is looking to start helping women of the community to produce and profit from their production.
“I want to thank Philadelphia for their support and their efforts for making this competition possible for us to actually help contribute to society,” Zayed said, thanking the organizers of the competition.