Help us integrate newcomers into our city, and bring the first Syrian cuisine to Lethbridge! 

Imagine yourself in the comfort of your own home, a place where you are relatively the same as everyone else. Now imagine yourself forced to move away from this place of familiarity to a place which is culturally unfamiliar. Unfamiliarity makes integration into a community increasingly difficult. Jeeran55 is an attempt at making the unfamiliar more familiar for the 55 Syrian newcomer families in Lethbridge, along with the larger Lethbridge community, and what better way to do so than through delicious food! Jeeran55 is a social enterprise which aims to bring authentic Syrian cuisine to Lethbridge, Alberta by providing an opportunity for Syrian newcomer women to express their passion for cooking and allowing them to share their food and culture with the larger Lethbridge and area market. Jeeran is the Arabic word for “neighbours”. With roughly 55 new families residing in this city, we wanted to provide our services to link up the communities that we are all a part of. Also, who doesn’t love a little hummus?

Who are we?

Our management team is comprised of three aspiring social entrepreneurs: Ammar Shahid, Deema Abushaban, and Abdullah Mouslli

Abdullah Mouslli - I go by Abed! I moved to Lethbridge in 2016 after winning the Student Refugee Program scholarship at the University of Lethbridge. I am a Syrian newcomer, a New Media student at ULethbridge, and an Arabic interpreter with Lethbridge Family services. As a newcomer, I understand how challenging it can be for newcomers to integrate into a larger community, especially with the language and cultural barriers. From my personal experience, I believe that empowerment and employment are the keys to integration. That’s why we came up with the idea of Jeeran55, a Syrian food catering business. It will provide newcomer women with employment opportunities to share their delicious food and culture with the larger Lethbridge community and will empower them to be productive members of our beautiful city.

Deema Abushaban - I am a twenty-three-year-old student pursuing an education in…education. As a Palestinian Muslim raised between the West and the Middle East, I strive to make every community I live in more diverse. I am an Arabic-English interpreter working for Lethbridge Family Services - Immigrant Services, and I have worked closely with Syrian newcomer families, more specifically newcomer youth over the past two years. I, along with my partners, aim to provide the Syrian newcomers with the means to share their culture with the larger Lethbridge community through delicious food, aka hummus. Jeeran55 is the perfect output for all of my entrepreneurial dreams, with the added value of providing newcomer women with opportunities to succeed and do what they love!

The Details  

• Kitchen rental fee
• Business licensing & insurance
• Chef professional training (equipment usage, etc.)  
• Promotional materials & marketing materials (offline & online) 
• Raw material for food 
• Kitchen equipment 
• Food warmers (to keep the food warm while it is getting to you!)