MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name

Your first choice website

One-line solution summary.

A website to support small businesses and productive families through which they will be trained, and logistically and financially supported to develop their businesses further.

What is your solution?

Your first choice website,

The first website in Yemen that brings small businesses, online stores, and productive families together under one roof. It will contribute to being a free marketing platform for them and help customers reach them faster and easier. It will serve as a database through which they will be trained on how to manage their projects more effectively and how to develop them better, ensuring their continuity and prosperity. The website also aims to provide small projects with continuous logistical support by contracting with experts in various fields of business management, in addition to the financial support necessary to develop their businesses and increase their general income.
It is worth noting that despite the simplicity of the solution, it has a great impact and uses a simple technology, which is the Internet, which is available to almost everyone

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

Small businesses play an important role in achieving the goals of economic and social development in most countries of the world, as they constitute a large proportion of industrial, agricultural, and service projects in various fields, and therefore they contribute to absorbing large numbers of labor and alleviating the problem of unemployment and also play an important role in acquiring technical skills, which also have the largest role in meeting the population's needs for goods and services. But as a result of the unfortunate situation in our country, Yemen, these projects are not sufficiently supported, not only from the financial aspect but even as a training and rehabilitation aspect.

the exact number of small businesses in Yemen is not clear as a result of the lack of studies and statistics in this field, but there is a large percentage of citizens working in the field of small businesses in Yemen.

Several factors contribute to this problem the most important and most prominent factors are the current political situation and the war that has exhausted the Yemeni people and weakened the economy, which needs a long time to recover.

An article in TRT World magazine titled, Small businesses in Yemen fall victim to both war and a currency crash, tells many stories about small businesses in the country forced to close because of the current situation. There is another reason in my opinion is the inability to manage the project according to the available resources and here comes our role.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

At first glance, you will think that the only targets of the solution are the owners of small businesses, but there is a great diversity of beneficiaries of the solution to include all citizens of Yemen, as the website will help customers to reach stores faster and easier, and at the same time we support projects in this way and thus will affect their lives positively.

The solution first will contribute to providing customers, which will help their business to grow more, and secondly, training the owners in how to manage their businesses professionally will have a major role in the continuity of these businesses as they constitute the main income for many families.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

We understand the necessary need for a solution because we have previous experience in this field.

we have had a small business since 2019, and during the past years we faced many difficulties in running our business and did not get the opportunity to develop it further, as we witnessed many of our relatives and friends who were forced to close their businesses.

Last week, we proposed the idea of the website to several small business owners, and they very much welcomed the idea, and we saw a glimmer of hope in their eyes, which increased our strength and determination to implement the idea. We also interviewed a number of them about how to develop the website to meet their training and financial needs.

Which aspects of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improving financial and economic opportunities for all (Economic Prosperity)

Our solution's stage of development:

Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution—in other words, what have you accomplished to date?

On January 8, 2022,

- Start thinking and building the idea from the ground up

- Communicating with small business owners to get their first impression of the idea

- Hadhramaut governorate was chosen as the first community to implement the solution, as it is the largest governorate in Yemen and has cultural and societal diversity, making it the best place to experience the solution.

On January 9, 2022,

- Starting to build the site, WIX Web development was used to create the site for free, which made it very limited, but it suffices as a trial version

- Publish an advertisement for small business owners to participate and join the site on various social media sites

On January 14, 2022,

- The Trial version of the site has been officially published and currently includes about 45 small works

So far, the site has been visited by more than 250 people around the world, of course, the largest percentage was from Yemen and separate percentages from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Malaysia, America, India, Turkey, and Egypt, according to the traffic overview service provided by WIX.

Currently, we continue to receive small business requests to join us on the site

Where our solution team is headquartered or located:

Mukallá, اليَمَن

Team Lead:

Abdullah Mohammed Baghfar (Medical Student - Hadhramout University(