Exactly. they were just passing by, seeing one woman cleaning all alone, removing the glass, everything s 0k? can we help? and they started helping me, so i cleaned all the shop and i removed everything from the shop and i closed for a month, because, psychologically, it was too much. so, i had to rebuild the shop, but, again, saying that, the community of lebanon helped me and there a lot of n60, and especially ngo that really helps women that are. i don t know if you re familiar with the madame caroline fattal, stand for women, they contacted me directly and it s like, we are ready to help you. what do you need? so, basically, this is where you can see there s still lebanon somewhere, there are still people living in this country, it s not like broken souls. there s a lot of love. nour, you were at home with husband when the blast occurred. what do you remember of that day? i remember it being
So i changed completely from the bank. i still have a job from eight to six, i work in a software company, and i take care of my shop because my dream was to actually leave everything and take care of this shop. but with covid and the financial crisis and the blast, it was too much, so we couldn t. and this was a family shop that you started, that you joined, with your sisters. yes, exactly, so we are a group of four. it was started at home because of my mum, so, since we are young, my mum used everything that s very natural. we had the idea, me and my sisters, to open the shop, in order to let people, medium range and high end, if you want, customers, to enjoy eating healthy, without like paying too much money. we started with two or three brands and then we have like 60 or 70 brands, all done by women. nour, you also work with a family member, your sister in law. yes. tell me more about your business. sure.
Of le panier du coin, a food store selling natural products, in the centre of beirut. and nour tannir is an architect and stylist, who co founded espacefann, a social enterprise, offering affordable workshops and professional courses in textile design and traditional crafts. welcome, joelle and nour. thank you. thank you, kim. it s great to be here. now, how would you describe your lives prior to the blast? i ll start with you, joelle. prior to the blast, it was an excellent life, so everything was booming, the businesses were booming, even the economy in lebanon was booming. and then, 2019 happened, so we had the financial crisis and then, in 2020, august 4, the big explosion. nour, how would you describe your life prior to that? i would say the same. the same thing. things were going smoothly up until 2019. before the blast, we had some. the banking crisis and the economic crisis here in lebanon, not to mention
Nour, what advice would you have for people? i d also say the same thing, but i would also tell people that it s great to plan, it s great to think about the future, but it s also important to be able to adapt to things that might come our way. and that no problem is big enough, because there will always be a solution. in my time in lebanon, i ve spoken to a number of women and there s one word that keeps coming up, which is resilience. oh, yeah! nour, do you consider yourself to be resilient? and is it something you always had, or is it something that s built up over time? i mean, if you are looking from the outside, you would see that, yes, this is a very resilient character. but i think that me and a lot of women who are like me don t really identify as resilient because we are just really caught up in our day to day life, trying to figure out
So, basically, when you want to find natural products in lebanon, you really have to go in the mountains, so, you know, when the crisis hit, and after covid, they were not working. the only stores that were working were actually the big supermarkets because they were delivering and the delivery was easy. so, they had specially no one to come from. always from beirut to. ..from the mountain to beirut, in order to get us the products. so, we started gathering some women that would actually cook or do something like jams or peanut butter or carob molasses or whatever products that you can actually find in my shop. in orderfor them to have a little bit of income, so they can be a bit more independent, or even help in the household and in the charges of the family. so, yeah, this is how we started. nour, who are your students? tell me about the courses that they are doing. so, the majority of our students are women. they come from