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Small business

June 25, 2026

 

A skill, a loan, and a room full of women

In Multan, Pakistan, Samina turned a childhood skill into a business, a training center and a widening circle of women finding their own way into work.

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From stitching fabric to teaching a room full of women, Samina has turned her skills into opportunity for others. (CARE Pakistan)

Andrea Durán

CARE

Samina’s path into entrepreneurship began with embroidery, a skill taught to her by her mother. When she saw that her household income was not enough to cover her family's needs, she started saving small amounts to buy fabric, embroidering pieces herself and selling them in local markets. As the boutique work grew, she added tailoring and beauty services. The business took shape gradually, through reinvestment and consistency.

She also noticed that the women around her had talent but lacked training, confidence, or a way to turn their skills into income. That pushed her to open a small training center alongside her boutique, where women could learn embroidery, tailoring, and beauty skills, either free of charge or for a minimal fee.

Samina had the skills, the customers and a clear plan for what her business could become. But she could not access the financing to get there. Loan applications came back with requirements she could not meet, documents she could not navigate, and no clear path forward.

That changed through Strive Women, a Mastercard Strive program led by CARE, which connected her to Mobilink Bank, a partner microfinance institution that works with women entrepreneurs. Her first loan unlocked a period of growth that extended well beyond her own business.

 

I want to open more training centers and hand them over to the girls so they, too, can do their own business and make a name for themselves in society.

Samina

 

With better equipment and more space, the training center could take in more women and the beauty services attracted more clients. As her income grew, Samina moved her children from government schools, where commuting was difficult and the quality of education limited, to private schools closer to home. Her standing within her family grew alongside her business.

Since then, she has taken a second loan and continues to build her relationship with financial institutions through consistent repayments. She now uses financial services with confidence and has encouraged several women in her community to apply for loans and start businesses of their own. Some of them already have.

"I do not want them to sit idle at home,” she says. “I want to open more training centers and hand them over to the girls so they, too, can do their own business and make a name for themselves in society."

Her journey reflects what access to finance, combined with skills and confidence, can do when it reaches the right person. The growth does not stop at one business. It moves outward, into the community, through every woman who finds support in a system that more than often says no to others like her.

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