Rachel Tome
My Business Training
Fatima Sagir
About Fatima Sagir
Fatima Sagir, lovingly called Uwar Marayu or "Mother of Orphans," is a passionate cook and entrepreneur from Bauchi State, Nigeria.
With over eight years of experience in cooking and food service, she dreams of opening her own restaurant named Sholumma. Fatima sees food as a way to bring joy, nourish families, and shape a better future.
Her goal is to offer warm, affordable meals while creating job opportunities, especially for young girls. She is driven by her deep commitment to community care and hopes her restaurant becomes a welcoming space for all.
Fatima Sagir
Business Goals
At the heart of Sholumma Restaurant are the values of hard work, affordability, cleanliness, and care. Fatima’s restaurant will reflect her journey from struggle to strength and inspire others, especially women, to pursue their dreams with resilience and determination.
Sholumma will serve beloved local dishes like masa, tuwo, jollof rice, rice and beans, and yam porridge. The space will be painted gold and milk, with a welcoming signpost, cultural decorations, soft music, and a peaceful atmosphere.
Fatima hopes to create a trusted, nourishing space where every customer feels welcome, cared for, and able to enjoy affordable, quality meals.
Fatima Sagir
Obstacles
Over her eight-year journey in food service, Fatima Sagir has developed expertise in cooking traditional dishes, managing events, and providing excellent customer service. She also keeps basic financial records and has catered for large gatherings, earning praise from a local organization for her delicious and healthy meals.
Despite her skills, Fatima’s biggest challenge is lack of capital. With no financial support from extended family and the responsibility of caring for seven children, she struggles to save for equipment or rent a shop.
These hardships have delayed her dream of opening Sholumma Restaurant, though her determination remains strong.
Fatima Sagir
Our Partnership
Fatima is seeking mentorship, funding, and training from Leadership Initiatives to turn her restaurant dream into a reality. She hopes to receive essential tools like large cooking pots, a deep freezer, a generator, utensils, chairs, and a stove, as well as a shop space to launch Sholumma.
Training in customer service and business recordkeeping is a key priority for her. Fatima’s long-term goals include expanding her menu, employing and mentoring young women, and achieving financial stability.
She dreams of seeing her children thrive and building a business that brings peace, purpose, and pride to her family.
My Grant Proposal Presentation
As part of the International Leadership and Business Internship, I collaborated with top development experts to help grow and strengthen my business partner’s brand.
At the end of the program, my team presented our final proposal to a panel of judges from the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee. This formal pitch allowed us to apply our entrepreneurial skills, showcase our strategic plan, and advocate for meaningful change in our partner’s business.
Our team was awarded a grant that will fund the implementation of our business partner’s plan, providing life-changing support that will expand operations, improve financial stability, and create new growth opportunities. Over the next year, this grant will help transform the future of their business and improve the quality of life for both the entrepreneur and their community.
My Grant Proposal
Throughout the program, we worked closely with Fatima Sagir to gain a clear understanding of their business goals. Though Fatimahas leveraged their skills and years of experience to create their business, they face obstacles hindering the expansion of their work.
Guided by their vision, we crafted a proposal detailing the marketing materials that would support the growth of their business. We devised a plan that would allow Fatima to optimize their business through a new branding strategy.
Investments in a logo and marketing materials, such as signs and flyers, are also vital for establishing a strong brand identity and expanding the customer base. These visual assets help create a consistent and memorable image that builds trust and recognition among potential clients.
Internship Highlights
Our business development journey began with a one-on-one Zoom meeting with our partner, Fatima Sagir, and our Nigerian project coordinator. This initial conversation laid the foundation for strong collaboration and helped us better understand Fatima’s background, family, goals for the business, and the specific challenges they were facing.
Hearing directly from Fatima gave us the insight we needed to begin brainstorming practical, personalized solutions. Each morning, our team held focused discussions to refine our ideas, reflect on expert advice from the day before, and adjust our timeline to move our plans forward efficiently.
Throughout the process, on-staff project coordinators and business development experts guided us, helping us ask the right questions and turn our ideas into meaningful, actionable strategies.
I had the unique opportunity to visit the Polish Embassy, where I gained insight into the role of diplomacy in fostering strong relationships between Poland and the United States.
The embassy functions as a center for international collaboration, working with partner countries and global organizations to address pressing issues such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change. Through this visit, I learned how diplomats engage in meaningful dialogue and policy development to create sustainable, people-focused solutions.
Officials from the Polish Embassy shared how they partner with local communities to identify needs and implement programs that empower individuals and strengthen long-term development. This commitment to community-driven impact inspired my team and me as we worked to develop our own business proposal focused on creating lasting change.
Throughout the internship, our team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with top experts in business and economic development from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
One of the highlights was a session with Gerald Gangaram, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot & leadership expert. He gave us a crash course in leadership and decision making, breaking down the key elements of what makes an effective leader. His insights helped us think bigger and more strategically about how to position our partner’s business for success.
With support from Mr. Gangaram and other global leaders, we sharpened our ideas, refined our strategy, and built a powerful pitch deck to present at the end of the week.
To further enhance our presentation and proposal, our team had the unique opportunity to partner with a business and development mentor with immense experience in the fields of finance, development, business management, and more.
With support from our mentor, we were able to craft key questions for our business partners that enabled us to design an effective SWOT analysis that guided our work throughout the week. Following the completion of the SWOT analysis, our mentor worked alongside us to hone our ideas and proposal recommendations that would provide funding and new marketing materials for our partner.
At the end of the week, our mentor supported our slide deck design and gave us instrumental feedback as we practiced pitching our ideas and proposals. This feedback directly contributed to our receiving support from the Leadership Initiatives’ Board of Directors and Guest Judges to implement our microgrant and marketing designs.