Afrah Shuja
INJAZ UAE
In May 2022, David Meltzer’s entrepreneur pitch show 2 Minute Drill aired an episode featuring six JA alumni from around the world: Alyssa Le, Junior Achievement of Southeast Texas (USA) alumna, Founder & CEO, Locket; Ida Johansson, Fonden for Entreprenørskab (JA Denmark) alumna, Founder & CEO, Turn Consulting; Kordian Caplazi, Young Enterpise Switzerland alumnus, Co-Founder, Rimon Technologies; Love Dager, Ung Företagsamhet (JA Sweden) alumnus, Founder & CEO, NextGenGov; Mykolas Aškelovičius, Lietuvos Junior Achievement (JA Lithuania) alumnus, Co-Founder, Yuffi; and Afrah Shuja, INJAZ UAE alumna, Founder & CEO, CorteX Wellness.
On 2 Minute Drill, contestants have two minutes to pitch their business to a panel of powerhouse businesspeople for the chance to win a cash prize of US$50,000. The alumni episode featured Verb Technology founder and CEO Rory Cutaia, Trade and Travel founder Teri Ijeoma, Powerhome Solar founder and CEO Jayson Waller, and show host and JA University Chief Chancellor (and fellow JA alumnus) David Meltzer. Unsurprisingly (at least to us), the six alumni blew the judges away with their pitches.
So . . . who won the US$50,000?
Afrah Shuja!
“I founded CorteX Wellness after learning about how many people are suffering from psychological disorders and mental health issues at school in particular,” Afrah said, “especially after witnessing, you know, how the pandemic affected my friends in my immediate circle. I decided that it's important to build something to help them.” CorteX Wellness provides direct lines of communication to therapists and counselors for students ages 10–18 years old in UAE. Users can also join interest groups, find additional resources, and sign up for events through the platform. “I've been doing this for a year now,” said 18-year-old Afrah. “You know, I want to really test my potential and see what my limits are, and then push those even more. Just put it in my all every day and see where it takes me.”
Afrah’s Pitch
“Fifteen-year-old Sarah was upset about her low grades, but she kept it to herself. Nobody knew until she died by suicide, leaving her friends and parents grieving. And she is not alone. In fact, approximately one in six youth reported making a suicide plan in 2019. And it’s not that schools just don’t care about this. They don’t have the infrastructure in place to do so adequately. I noticed that affecting my friends. So I built a website to facilitate remote counselor communication. And with its success, I realized I could do so much more. Fast forward, and that project is now accompany: Cortex Wellness. We’re digitizing school wellbeing-support systems. For example, in the place of super long and boring psychological surveys, we’re gamifying those online. You can book a school counselor appointment and find help with the privacy and ease student like Sarah deserve. We are currently pre revenue having just launched our MVP and R&D that follows with 84% of students saying that having Cortex at their school would have helped them with a mental health issue. We toured schools an annual fee and our milestone market in the GCC is valued at $2.21 billion. We’ve received over 11 recognitions including first place at the Harvard Innovation Challenge and Company of the Year by INJAZ UAE. We plan to service 10 to 15 schools this year. I acknowledge I’m only 18 years old, but I surround myself with awesome people. I’m joined by my former business teacher and school wellbeing researcher full time as well as an advisory board with experts and executives. This is not only a huge market gap, but one that we have a social responsibility to fill. With the $50,000 we will have the seed necessary to scale our tech and help schools better actively prevent tragedies like Sarah’s from happening ever again. Thank you.”
Afrah and her team developed Cortex Wellness during their time in the JA Company Program with INJAZ UAE, and they won the national Company of the Year competition. Additionally, the company won first place in the Harvard Innovation Challenge and Abu Dhabi University’s Entrepreneurial Challenge, and it is part of the United Nations SDSN Youth Project and startAD incubator at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Check out Cortex Wellness for yourself and give it a follow on Instagram!
In addition to the US$50,000 in cash and prizes awarded to the winner, each episode features the JA Impact Award. This award is given to the contestant whose company demonstrates the greatest social impact. The recipient of the Impact Award is selected based on their mission-driven values and has the opportunity to align with JA Worldwide to our alumni network, driving awareness to their brand through millions of entrepreneurs around the world. The award also comes with a US$1,000 donation to JA Worldwide in that contestant’s name. But, of course, with this special episode came a special surprise for all six contestants and for JA . . .
“I am so impressed by all of the contestants,” David Meltzer said, “that I'm going to make a donation in the name of each of the contestants. Because it's so impressive and the issues that they're addressing are so important. And I encourage anyone out there that watches this episode, we support Junior Achievement because if anything is going to be a testament to what that program does for our future.”
Watch the special JA alumni episode of 2 Minute Drill below or on davidmeltzer.tv.
Aya Yousef
INJAZ Lebanon
INJAZ Lebanon alumna Aya Yousef, a nominee for the first-ever Global Student Prize and architecture student at the American University of Beirut, spent time as a child in a refugee camp. We’re truly inspired by Aya’s journey, and we think you will be, too.
JA Worldwide: Given your own experience, what are some of the biggest challenges facing children in refugee settlements, especially in terms of Global Goal 4, Quality Education?
Aya: The biggest challenge facing young refugees is a lack of access to proper education and what that does to their mindset. But another major issue is the architecture and infrastructure of camps, which lack open, green spaces, and this led to my current major.
In 2016, I started the first-ever coding club at my school, in which I shared my knowledge and experience in coding with around 20 students who were willing and eager to learn something new. I wanted to reach students with a similar background—who had lived in a refugee settlement—because I didn’t think they would have learned to code in a settlement, yet that knowledge can open up so many opportunities and revolutionize a student’s mindset.
I started noticing that these students also lacked access to resources about attending universities and earning scholarships in Lebanon. I had already been researching this information for myself and decided to start sharing these opportunities. I became part of an outreach team to spread the word about educational opportunities at the best universities in Lebanon. I partnered a year later with two other change makers with the same vision and mission, and we co-founded ToRead to increase the scale of our outreach.
JA Worldwide: Can you tell us more about ToRead?
Aya: ToRead works on bridging and filling the gap between high school students and universities/scholarship foundations. It is an online platform that allows high school students to search, filter, and compare university and scholarship options in Lebanon and abroad. They can compare all university options in Lebanon, check applying criteria, and available services and programs. They can also find scholarships and other opportunities they are eligible to apply to.
Today, I am no longer an active program manager; however, prior to leaving, my co-founders and I were able to register it officially as a company and even win several awards, including the Soraya Salti Best Company in the Arab World in Youth Entrepreneurship Forum 2020, the MasterCard Excellence in Technology Award in 2020, the INJAZ Lebanon Company of the Year Award in 2020, the Asfari Challenge for Social Innovation in the education sector in 2020, the incubation support by Nawaya Network 2019, and more.
JA Worldwide: What led you to choose architecture as your major?
Aya: Once I saw the architectural challenges of refugee settlements (and, now, planning a better camp is on my bucket list!), I wanted to make it my focus of study. Architecture opens the eye and widens the mindset, changing how you think about a building, the space around it, its users, the city it’s located in, and more. Architecture has changed my vision of the world and my personal mission to the humanity.
Architecture opens the door for many opportunities in various fields, because it’s about more than buildings. What I have found most interesting in my academic journey is how the design skills I’m learning are integrated with graphic and digital design, social media, animation, filmmaking, and more. The architectural journey doesn’t stop! For example, I never imagined I would find myself working on an agricultural architectural prototype, tackling food insecurity and roof gardening. Architecture is a starting point; a tool to be pushed beyond its usual limits.
JA Worldwide: What do you remember most about participating in the JA Company Program?
Aya: Right after we started, we were in mentorship sessions, developing our startup, preparing for the pitch and demo day. From there, we got to specialize and build our business. We competed on the national level, and then moved on to the INJAZ Al-Arab competition with 13 other countries. We had so many new experiences and success, and also networked and connected with mentors and other students.
Team Shatla: One-Stop Shop for Plants
INJAZ Oman
INJAZ Al-Arab JA MENA | INJAZ Oman
Shahad al Hasani, Sarah Al Zaabi, Zainab Al Lawati, Ahmed Al Lawati, Hashim Mustafa
Houseplants and outdoor plantings are difficult to come by in Oman, especially in urban areas. Nurseries are not close-by, offer only a small number of products, and are usually understaffed, all of which makes finding plants is a challenge.
To tackle this issue, INJAZ Oman students conceived of, designed, and opened The Shatla Store, a website that brings nurseries within reach through edutainment (browsing the site is a well-designed plant learning experience), online ordering, and home delivery. The gardening box that arrives included specific seeds that will grow into the exact right houseplant, a well-designed mix of dirt, a handheld shovel, and entertaining care instructions . . . everything Omanis need to grow the houseplants that fit their lives.
The road to creating The Shatla Store wasn’t easy. With the mounting pressures of high-school—especially with college looming and the importance of performing well in classes in order to open up scholarship opportunities—two critical team members left the company. When that happened, the rest of the team considered doing the same.
Instead, demonstrating the resilience that makes JA so necessary in youth education, the remaining team returned to its original vision, developed a new business plan, and then undertook a marketing campaign that resulted in a 75% increase in sales.
Today, Shatla manages over 1,000 different plant species and, thanks to relationships with nurseries all over Oman, makes local pick-up possible. As their customers grow products from seeds to plants, Shatlas has its eye on the future, which includes landscaping, irrigation systems, Shatla-branded nurseries, and expansion beyond Oman.
Team Balda Taiba
INJAZ Yemen
INJAZ Yemen navigated checkpoints, impassible roads, and war-ravaged cities to bring a student team to MENA’s top youth-entrepreneurship competition in Oman
When Majid Al-Shammiri first heard that the INJAZ Al-Arab Young Entrepreneurs Celebration (YEC) would be held in Oman, he knew it was the closest the competition would ever come to his home country. In better days, the trip was a three-hour flight. But traveling from Sana’a, Yemen, to Muscat, Oman, would require three solid days of travel, mostly by car, as Majid, the student team, and their mentor circled well around the country’s most dangerous roads and checkpoints.
Yemen, currently ranked as the most dangerous place on earth, has been engaged in a civil war for more than six years. Yet INJAZ Yemen, which operates out of a modest location in the capital city, served 28,000 students in 2020, thanks to a small but dedicated group of employees and volunteers.
Majid’s Story
Born in Taiz, Yemen, Majid moved to Sana’a with his family when he was seven years old. By the time he finished high school, he had come to love the 7,000-year-old city, full as it was then of shops and cafes, and home to Sana’a University.
Majid’s last year of university, 2011, also marked the famous Arab Spring, and Yemen was one of the first countries to experience the exhilarating—and destabilizing—protests, following the first uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. After a mostly peaceful few months of political turmoil, Yemen began 2012 with a new president and a renewed hope in democracy.
That was also the year that Majid was offered the opportunity to relaunch JA operations in Yemen. He had other job offers but wanted to bring JA’s hands-on programs to his home country. Success quickly followed: In both 2012 and 2013, INJAZ Yemen made impressive showings at the YEC. But conditions within the country steadily worsened until a civil war erupted in late 2014.
A Country at War
At first, Majid and his countrymen were hopeful that a peace agreement would quell the violence. But that lasted only a few months. By the end of 2015, the INJAZ location suffered damage during an airstrike, and Majid considered, for the first time, shutting down the operation.
But his students simply wouldn’t let him give up. Keenly aware of how much they need the skills to prepare them for employment and entrepreneurship, INJAZ Yemen students insisted on taking the risk and continuing to learn.
The new building allocated to them was undamaged but far from a home for staff, volunteers, and students, creating challenges due to gasoline shortages and increasingly frequent checkpoints. These factors also increased the challenges that Majid and his staff and students faced, especially when traveling. For the INJAZ Yemen Company of the Year team (called Balda Taiba) to travel to Oman in the middle of a civil war now seemed a remote possibility.
In late 2019, after Majid negotiated for months to secure passports and visas for his students, Team Balda Taiba set off for Oman on a warm Wednesday afternoon. The first part of the journey, from Sana’a to Marib, had been a two-hour car ride in pre-war days. But it took the INJAZ Yemen team 14 hours, as they were forced to travel on a secluded mountain road that avoided checkpoints and other dangers.
From Marib to Seiyun was another eight hours in the car. From Seiyun to the Oman border took another 14 hours, this time through the desert, finally arriving at 6am on Saturday. The team had been on the road for two and a half days, with just seven hours of breaks.
Once in Oman, they traveled by car to Salalah, slept for a few hours, and then boarded a plane to Muscat, arriving late Saturday night. The competition would begin the next morning. They had made it.
Coffee, Camaraderie, and Competition
The INJAZ Al-Arab YEC is a well-oiled machine. In addition to presentations and interviews with judges, each team is assigned a trade-show booth, which they arrange in whatever way they believe will elicit the best response from judges. For Team Balda Taiba—all students at Sana’a University—the theme was coffee, the product that the company processes, infuses with local flavors, and sells, along with other hot beverages. At the trade show, the team set up carafes Judges and other VIPs who visited the team’s trade booth received a hot, spicy sample beverage, and then were pitched on its unique flavor, its affordable cost, and how there was no doubt that Yemen produces the finest coffee in the world.
““Our work is to open the minds of the youth of Yemen. For they will lead the way.””
When one visitor, a native of Brazil, stopped by, suggesting that, perhaps, Brazilian coffee—not Yemenese—was the best in the world, a member of Team Balda Taiba laughed out loud, and said, “Oh, you Brazilians. Just like the Kenyans. You always think you have the best. But wait until you taste the real thing!”
She was right. The judges thought so, too, and on the last day of the YEC, Team Balda Taiba was awarded the prestigious Citi Foundation Client Focus Award, a coup for the team and their mentor, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Isti, as well as for Majid and his staff. Suddenly, the 50+ hours of dangerous travel seemed worthwhile.
Two Yemens
The sheer joy of the team as they rushed across the stage to receive the award is, perhaps, the most illustrative contrast between the Yemen described in international news stories and the Yemen that Majid experiences every day. One is a story of suffering and loss, ranging from extreme food insecurity to demolished city blocks to shortages of everything from gasoline to teachers. The other is a story of exuberance, resilience, and—most of all—hope.
But, as Majid would tell you, they’re the same Yemen. One reflects the present; the other, the future.
Sarah Talbi
INJAZ Algeria
by Sara Hammoud, Gather Reporter for MENA
Thanks to Algerian entrepreneur and JA alumna Sarah Talbi, cleaning your plate at the end of the meal is no longer enough. Now, your plate is part of the meal. Sarah, a 22-year-old food engineer, is the co-founder of Genewin, a startup with a mission to replace plastic plates and cutlery with edible and biodegradable versions. Through her patent-pending product, Sarah sources wheat bran, a part of wheat that is usually thrown away by bread makers, to manufacture Genewin’s products: plates, bowls, cups, flatware, and more.
““The worst enemy of yourself is yourself. The most difficult challenges to overcome are the ones we carry internally.””
It took hundreds of hours in the lab to develop a product that starts biodegrading as soon as it touches soil or water and that is edible. (Compare this to several centuries required for plastic products to biodegrade!) Genewin’s first prototype was tested with team members and university professors.
By January 2020, the prototype was assessed to be safe for both the consumer and the environment, and Sarah applied for a patent to protect the formula and the process of manufacturing. She expects to be granted the patent in 2021, giving her 20 years of protection in Algeria, which can be extended to other countries through the collaboration that exists between the Algerian government and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
“It all started with the JA Company Program,” Sarah says, thinking back to her time with INJAZ Algeria, when she decided to combine her newfound business skills with her engineering background to create a successful startup.
Her JA team, which was made up of 20 students working in the food industry, came in second at the INJAZ Algeria Company of the Year competition. That singular experience brought out the entrepreneur in Sarah, and began building both her confidence and skills. She adds that being a young female entrepreneur in the MENA region is challenging, because women are often not taken seriously in the business world. But her INJAZ mentors did. They treated all students equally, regardless of gender.
Today, the Genewin team all have backgrounds in food engineering and business and are targeting Algeria youth, with green consumption patterns, as their target market. Over time, they also hope to lower costs though economies of scale by expanding to other countries in Europe and in the Arab world. And Genewin continues to research improvements in the shelf life of the product: It’s currently six months before opening the package and one month after opening.
But Sarah’s longevity in the business world is practically a guarantee given all that she has already accomplished. Sarah encourages young people like her to dream big and work hard toward their goals. Bran may be the main ingredient of Sarah’s product, but ambition and passion are the ingredients of her success.
““It all started with the JA Company Program.””