Mittwoch, 04. März 2020
Bzar Mohammed returned with his family to Iraq where he opened his own car tyre repair shop. Here’s the story of his business venture.
My name is Bzar (pronounced Bijar) Mohammed. Because of the ongoing IS violence in my country I came in 2015 with my family to Germany. The journey to Germany was dangerous and we were relieved to finally arrive safely. As a skilled mechanic with 10 years of working experiences I quickly found a job and my children integrated into German society quite easily.
We were lucky to come as refugees from a war zone: public authorities extended our residence title for specific purposes again and again and there was even quite a good chance to be allowed to stay in Germany permanently. Nevertheless, my work situation was not satisfying.
Although in my country I was a professional mechanic for years, I only was allowed to work in ancillary activities. I couldn’t afford an official German car mechanic education. Eventually my children also started to long for life in their homeland – especially as we spent the summer holidays in Iraq and they had a very good time with their family.
In order to not miss the beginning of the new school year in Iraq, we decided to return in the late summer of 2019. Everything now needed to go very quickly and my most important task was to support my family financially. For us it was obvious: back in Iraq I am going to open a car repair shop. In the past I was a self-employed mechanic and painter – there was no other option.
What I needed most for starting my business was money – everything else concerning the daily work in a car repair shop I knew. That’s why the return counselling recommended me to participate at the business start-up program StartHope@Home - after participating in coaching I could apply for money from ERIN Business Start-up Plus of BAMF (the German Ministry for Migration and Refugees).
Here we go. In two coaching sessions I worked with the help of a trainer of Social Impact over the business model for my tyre changing shop. We analysed all business processes and made sure that the government aid would be suitable for building up my business. The Starthope@home trainings helped me a lot to focus on the essential steps and prepare the finance plan in a way that my family and I could live from my prospective business.
At the end of October 2019 we flew back to Iraq and an exciting time started for us.
In the meantime, I successfully built up my tyre repair shop – even with an oil changing service! But the journey wasn’t easy. Although the business plan and especially the finance plan were well prepared – the reality in Dohuk was different. My original idea to build up a small repair shop with a lifting jack but without oil changing wasn’t the one that people wanted me to offer. To gain my clients’ trust I needed to build up a repair shop with the possibility to handle two clients at the same time and also offer more services to them.
The trainings with Social Impact also helped me to handle these challenges. First of all the financial help of ERIN program was an important support (even though it was less than expected) because with these resources I could gain a bigger credit. But furthermore Starthope@home helped me to structure my ideas and to change my plans in the way reality asked me to.
Social Impact Lab Stuttgart
