But living alone without my family in such a big city was a challenge. I looked for a job but couldn't find one. I searched tirelessly, trying to find out how I could improve myself and wanted to explore all the possibilities. I applied for internships to gain experience and took various courses to improve my professional skills. But despite all the courses and internships, I still felt like I wasn't finding what I really wanted.

Practising for job interviews, creating a CV

Then I joined the "She Works Wonders" programme, which was funded by PepsiCo and included a special programme for us at the Egyptian-German Center for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration (EGC).

The programme was very helpful as it started with the first steps and taught us to first discover ourselves, our personality, our skills and what we need to work on. We also had one-to-one meetings with mentors who supported us, for example, in creating a CV and a LinkedIn profile and helped us to prepare for the interview and for dealing with an HR department.

The sessions helped me to gain more confidence, understand the questions and answer professionally. As part of the programme we also learned how we can search for successful companies and start-ups that could help us learn and succeed. We had to search for a certain number of start-ups and then solve a task related to this. One of the start-ups was the company I work for today.