GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Restaurants have been spreading in the Gaza Strip as local investment projects, while unemployment rates among university graduates reached 69.5%, according to a report published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in July 2015. This situation prompted Nour Naji, who graduated from the faculty of science at the Islamic University in Gaza in 2011, to create a first-of-its-kind project in Gaza to teach culinary arts and give unemployed young people the opportunity to work and earn a good income.

Naji first thought of the project, which she called “Smile Kitchen,” in 2015. She told Al-Monitor, “It was just an idea, and when I started to consider it seriously I faced many obstacles to implementing it. This project called for renting a location, which could cost no less than $7,000 a year. The project remained ink on paper as I did not have enough capital to invest in it, until the Smile Training and Development Center — which works to develop skills in various fields in Gaza — adopted it and I was offered a location to launch my project in May 2016 and organize cooking courses there. This is how it all started.”

Naji introduced her project to the public through Facebook, creating a page to promote the cooking courses. She said, “I was really surprised by the broad acclaim and the number of people who registered for the courses. This was a great motivation and encouraged me to continue.”

She added, “For the first course, many housewives registered because they either wanted to develop their cooking skills or they wanted to open their own business at home to help their husbands support their families. After that, many men also registered for the course to have the opportunity to work in restaurants in Gaza.”