Soccer balls discovery in Afghanistan, then onto Dubai

In December 2006, Bpeace launched a business plan competition to recruit Afghan women entrepreneurs for its three-year Fast Runner business development program. Applications for the expected businesses in food processing came in. But surprisingly, three Afghan soccer-ball manufacturers applied. Bpeace volunteers started to peel back the onion on this concentration and found that under the Taliban, Afghan families who fled to Pakistan had learned to stitch soccer balls in refugee camps and brought back the skill to Afghanistan. Bpeace believed if it could unite the three independent applicants under one export brand, it could make a U.S. market for the soccer balls and exponentially expand these three separate businesses, creating significant additional employment, and hope for thousands of Afghan families.

Bpeace invited Taj, Aziza and Ferishta into the Bpeace program and spent a week with them in Dubai in November 2007, in partnership with Dubai Women’s College. (See video below.) In Dubai, Bpeace volunteers seeded the vision of an export brand, and left it to Taj, Aziza and Ferishta to see the possibilities. By the end of the week, they had bonded and agreed to find a way to work together.