Khaled is an Internally Displaced Person from Eastern Ghouta in Damascus countryside to Aleppo eastern countryside, he is married with two children.
Khaled suffered the hard journey of displacement, to get out of his city and his house with their clothes only, and arrived with his family to Shabiran camp in the countryside of Al-Bab, where all the families displaced from Eastern Ghouta settled.
He could not afford to live in these dilapidated tents that do not protect them from the hot summer and the cold winter months, where he searched for a house for rent, and then he moved and seven families of his relatives and family to stay in one house, because of the lack of houses and expensive rent of the houses. After working several jobs and saving a small amount of money he and his brother rented a house to live in together.
The state of the house was not that good, as it was considered a semi-destructive, and there were no furniture, and they couldn’t get anything out of their house in Eastern Ghouta. The air raid campaign targeted their area and ended up displacing them to the north of Syria, where they bought simple supplies to protect their children from the changing weather, but it still was not enough.
Many difficulties he faced in getting a job, and he didn’t have a capital that could open a business for him, so he started to do anything they ask of him, from working in building materials and moving wood until he thought of the idea of a sawdust project.
Khalid took a small amount of money from one of his friends and a opened a sawmill where he converts the land trees and wood planks to sawdust and sells them to the owners of the domestics where they are used. The income he was getting was not enough to meet the needs of the house and the purchase of more wood. He was only able to buy small quantities of wood to work with and then buying more after he sells what he bought.

As Khaled was looking for ways to increase his income, he was invited by one of the loan participants in the city of Al Bab, to attend an introductory seminar on the Kareem Microfinance Fund which was launched not long ago in the area. Khaled liked the idea of the project as it is better than relief baskets that makes people aid dependent. Khaled came with a group of his friends to apply for a loan to improve his work, his living, and his finances. The process took about two weeks to complete all procedures and transactions and obtain a loan where he started buying large quantities of wood and paying for it directly.
Not only was he able to buy more wood, but he paid the rest of the wood he took on loan, but he became his own boss, and he also prepared pieces of wood for heating in winter, where many people depend on wood because of the high prices of fuel. In addition to the expansion of the number of workers, he had two workers who turned into four. They helped each other, and he starts paying them on time.
Khaled benefited a lot from Kareem Microfinance Fund, as his financial and living situation improved significantly.
Kareem project supports small projects and improves per capita income, and it is important to pay and meet all obligations on time so that the client can get more opportunities to get the chance for another loan in the next phases.