KABUL (Afghanistan) – Its name is “BBB”, acronym for Brave Business in a Bus. It’s the first mobile incubator for female entrepreneurship in Afghanistan, and it was created by Selene Biffi, born in Monza (Italy) 42 years ago and founder of She Works for Peace (SWFP) which for over 15 years has been involved in projects related to education and the creation of employment for women and young people in Afghanistan. 

With SWFP – the non-profit organization that Selene herself created at the request of women following the fall of Kabul, currently once again under the control of the Taliban who have established an Islamic Emirate in the country – Selene deals with offering technical training and support to local entrepreneurship.

The initiative was born with the intent of providing concrete support to Afghan women, helping them to create micro-businesses thanks to free training in entrepreneurship and management, reaching them directly – by bus, precisely – in the poorest neighborhoods of Kabul, where over 90% of the population lives below the poverty line and women face increasingly serious limitations to their fundamental rights.

“Nowadays,” Selene explaines, “more and more women need to start a home business and the private sector is, in fact, still one of the few opportunities that women have in terms of work.”

What kind of businesses are they?

“Most of these home businesses” Selene continues, “are small, with 2 to 4 employees, but there are also businesses run by women with more employees.”

In which sectors do these “micro-businesses” operate?

“Most of them are run at home and are active in sectors such as tailoring, embroidery, crafts and food production.”

What are the most immediate effects of starting these businesses?

“For many families, these women-run businesses have become the only opportunity for survival.”

Selene Biffi’s project is supported by OTB Foundation, a non-profit organization of the OTB (“Only The Brave”) group. “We chose to concretely support She Works for Peace – explains Arianna Alessi, vice president of OTB Foundation – because we believe that Selene Biffi and her team (which includes entirely local staff) have a clear and determined vision to help Afghan women build a better future. ‘Brave Business in a Bus’ is not only an initiative that promotes female entrepreneurship, but a real opportunity for women’s emancipation in a context where access to resources is extremely limited. In a country devastated by conflicts and restrictions, these women are the key to the social and economic rebirth of Afghanistan”.

Thanks to “Brave Business in a Bus”, Afghan women who work from home have access to a comprehensive training program, which includes both practical teaching and the possibility of using essential tools for running a business free of charge, giving them training, technical assistance and access to small machinery.

“Brave Business in a Bus” moves directly into the most marginalized areas, it is estimated that in just six months it will assist over 1,000 women-run micro-enterprises in the poorest neighborhoods of Kabul, offering courses on marketing, accounting, product development, sales management and much more. The participating women – many of whom are mothers, widows or caregivers of disabled people – will receive direct assistance that will allow them to acquire practical skills to improve the management of their businesses and their impact on the market. All of this, it happens on board the cozy bus whose interiors were designed by architect Andrea Rubini of “Milleseicento Studio”, who has donated his time and his professionalism free of charge.

One of the goals of the project is to address the difficulties that many women in Afghanistan have to overcome on a daily basis. “In a context where employment opportunities are highly limited and limited to areas such as primary education, health and home-based entrepreneurship, one of the few possibilities is to start small productive activities from home – continues Arianna Alessi – : however, without adequate training and with often limited literacy, the creation of a micro-enterprise becomes a real challenge. ‘Brave Business in a Bus’ offers a concrete response to these difficulties, bringing support where it is most needed”.

The OTB Foundation has long been active in Afghanistan, where it has already implemented significant projects such as “Pink Shuttle”, the first and only all-female transport service created in Kabul to solve the obstacle of women’s mobility, and “Fearless Girls” to provide legal and psychological support and educational activities to Afghan girls detained in juvenile prisons accused of having committed “crimes against morality” for having escaped, by fleeing, forced marriages or other types of violence. It has also contributed to the creation of a male orphanage in Kabul and the first public female orphanage in the province of Kapisa (info: https://www.otbfoundation.org/).

In the photos above, the bus in Kabul (Otb Foundation)

Only the Brave… like Selene, the ‘teacher from Kabul’

MILAN (Italy) – A degree from Bocconi University in Milan, then a Master in International Humanitarian Action from UCD in Ireland and Universidad de Deusto in Spain and, again, diplomas from Insead in France and Harvard University in the USA, thanks to scholarships. An important curriculum of studies, for Selene Biffi (in the pic above, by Daniele Di Mico). But it was not studying that gave her the will to undertake, from a very young age, the path of social work in its purest expression that is: to help the most desperate people in the most difficult situations, in places and times that are at the very least unfavorable. For example: women, in Afghanistan, today.

Selene, how did this desire to help others arise in you?

“I come from a family like many others – my parents are household goods merchants – where, however, social commitment has always been very present: my parents have been going to India for over forty years and, at the end of the 90s, they began to build a small hospital, a nursery and an elementary school which, to date, offer free services to thousands of people living in extreme poverty. They did everything themselves, with great personal, economic and family sacrifices. Their example has therefore always accompanied me”.

What was your debut in the social world?

“Even when I was at university, I decided to throw myself into what is now a life mission as well as a job. In 2004, I was selected as a participant for Italy at Oxfam’s International Youth Parliament, a conference where young people from all over the world were selected based on ideas for improving their communities. I was chosen for a technological idea: to create an information portal so that young Italians could participate more in activities abroad, from conferences to internships, from courses to more. In fact, at the time there was no ‘collector site’ that presented everything in a single space. However, when I arrived at Parliament, I realized that there are two types of participants: those like me, who have ideas but no practical experience in their implementation, and those who have already had several years of activity in the social sector. From there, the idea of ​​transforming an information portal into a training portal, so as to connect those who have the skills with those who need to learn”.

We are talking about the early 2000s: the web was not as developed and widespread as it is today, so your idea was quite pioneering…

“Yes, we are talking about 2004: I was 22 years old and no one even knew what startups were, just like e-learning. I spent months knocking on various doors – universities, NGOs, companies, etc. – in the hope that someone would take my idea into consideration and make it happen, but everyone told me I was too young and that the idea was science fiction. But I found a programmer and, with 150 euros, in January 2005 I launched Youth Action for Change (YAC), an organization that offers free online courses by young people and for young people, on topics such as project management, sustainable development, fundraising and carries out various other activities. In the space of a year, we reached thousands of young people in 130 countries around the world. And in 2007, the World Bank included us in its annual ‘best practice’. From there, I never stopped and many other projects were born”.

Among the many projects, in 2013, right in Kabul, Selene launched the Qessa Academy, a school for storytellers, where kids could recover their traditions and use storytelling to find work and create development at a local level: the school remained open for 7 years and closed at the end of 2019. But she, the “teacher from Kabul” (from the title of the book that tells her experience in Afghanistan), did not give up and when women asked her for help to be able to work, she launched She Works for Peace and, following, the current project “Brave Business in a Bus (BBB)”. Where the adjective “brave”, “courageous”, could not be more appropriate to define Selene’s activity. And her.

Marzio Pelù