Mariam Shaar
Mariam Shaar was born in the Bourj El Barajneh refugee camp, Lebanon, where she now lives, to Palestinian parents. She has been a social worker for almost twenty years, and runs the Bourj El Barajneh Center of the Women's Program Association, an organisation that provides education, vocational-skills training and microloans to women in eight out of the twelve Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In 2013, with seed funding from Alfanar, a venture philanthropy, she founded Soufra, a catering business that employs women from Bourj El Barajneh camp.