Beneficiary: Oujen Kerbaj
Fund Date: 11/2019
Age: 42 years old
Family members: 5
Like all residents of Syria, Oujen and his wife had their fair share of suffering from being displaced and losing their belongings
One day at the start of the armed conflict in 2012, Oujen and his wife were visiting his in-laws in AL-Midan when they heard the news of armed groups breaking into Sheikh Maksoud area. They confiscated the houses, and soon the whole area became out of civilian reach, and the family like many others couldn’t save anything of their belongings. they had no idea that they wouldn’t be able to see their house there ever again.
His main profession was in the cloth manufacturing lane, he had even taken some time-off from it and worked as a nurse in AL-Kalima hospital for five years and that’s where he met his wife.
Oujen who’s 37 years old, and his wife Noushig who’s 31 years old have struggled after that devastating incident, they decided to escape the falling shells and travel to a village near Mashta Al-Helou, where Noushig’s Aunt used to live, especially that Noushig was pregnant by then, their family was expanding and they had to work in anything they could find, it was a hard time for them; being in a strange town with no stable job or residence, they reached a point of hopelessness that they even worked in farming, by planting beans to provide their daily livelihood.
Four years passed by, Aleppo became a bit safer, Oujen and his family moved back to Aleppo. Oujen had previously worked in many different domains. However, going back to the nursing profession was not an option, because of the low salaries. Oujen had no choice but to search for a job in the clothing business.
Today Oujen works in a clothing workshop and Noushig works in another low paid workshop of assembling electrical switches, and together they are barely making a decent living. This is the reason he chose to pursue a new type of career as a taxi driver. It is profitable and will make him stand on his own feet, and most importantly it is not a seasonal job like his current one, which is a vital matter for a main provider like himself.