Before becoming a small business owner, Hilola Juraeva, 36, from a rural area in the region of Namangan, spent eight years sewing towels to support her household while her spouse migrated abroad to provide for the family.

“I am the third generation of embroiderers in my family. This profession was left to me as a meros (the craft as a form of cultural heritage),” she explained.

But she wanted to take her skills beyond the factory where she used to work and to take the threads of business ownership into her own hands. However, limited by her housekeeping duties and raising three children, she had to bring her job home.

UNFPA and FAO run a joint project aimed at equipping women in rural areas in Uzbekistan with knowledge and skills to turn meros into a business and, one year ago, Hilola became one of the participants at a training session to learn how to book meetings, get financing, file taxes and more.

Upon completing of the training, she turned parts of her house into a creative zone where six women sew children’s clothing. “I hired five women. Customers liked our work and signed a contracts to produce children’s clothing,” Hilola said about the fruits of her labour. 

In the future, she wants to expand her small business. “I want to grow. I want to hire more women,” she explained.

The project is funded by the UN Secretary-General's Peacebuilding Fund and aims to strengthen good neighborly relations on both sides of the border running through the Fergana Valley through the development of cooperation in agriculture and other areas, with a special focus on empowering women and youth in the border regions of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).