After conducting community explorations into which issues and problems the Mahali Lab should focus on, we ended up with one challenge that was voted on as the most pressing by community members: income.

Income, however, is such a broad topic that framing an opportunity space — a lens for constraining the problem that would maximize potential solutions and inspire participants to join — became a daunting task. While accessing enough income for a dignified standard of living is a recurrent problem in people’s lives, someone who is employed, whether legally or without a permit, might experience this problem differently from someone who is a small business owner, or someone who relies on cash assistance or remittances from a family member to meet their basic needs.

To ensure that we were framing the income challenge in a way that is easily digestible and more “actionable” for future Mahali Lab participants, we conducted a short design research sprint to map out different aspects of the problem, their inter-connectivity, and the relative importance to community members. This is what we found.

User profiles and perceptions of income

“I have no problems meeting my basic needs,” a young man named Mohammad said as we started to discuss income, much to the disdained look of the other participants. Even physically, Mohammad was removed from the rest of the group, far to one side of the room, close to the door, almost ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Mohammad was also one of the lucky ones: he was a Syrian man who had found a Jordanian partner to start a business with. Under other circumstances, that business relationship would be thought of as asymmetrical, one-sided, unfair. That’s because Syrian refugees cannot legally own a businesses under Jordanian law. Despite this limitation, many resort to arrangements where a Jordanian person signs all the paperwork related to the business while the refugee is responsible for doing the work.

For Mohammad this meant plenty of work to ensure that he was selling enough mobile phones and accessories to build a thriving business, while giving away 50% of his revenue. But Mohammad was happy with this relationship: if his business partner was satisfied, it meant he wouldn’t try to leave him out to dry. The only thing he lamented about was the fact that he had to send his partner on international trips, such as visits to their Chinese supplier. “He doesn’t have the experience,” Mohammad said, “but what can you do.”

To the other participants in the workshop, Mohammad had no business complaining. He was making money, of which many of them could only hope to earn a fraction. The woman sitting closest to him, Sabah, was a widow and mother of four. She tried starting a business from home, making makdous (stuffed cured eggplants). However, the money she earned was so low that she needed to supplement it with cash assistance from an NGO just to pay rent and put food on the table. “Sometimes, I just stop making makdous because I don’t even have enough money to buy the ingredients,” Sabah said. “If they decide to stop giving basmat ein* tomorrow, I don’t know what I will do.” Other women in the room, many of whom were widows or had a spouse in another country, murmured and nodded in agreement.

*“Eye fingerprint” in Arabic, a reference to UNHCR-provided cash assistance accessed through iris scan technology.