Before Suaad made phone calls in Germany, she’d open Google Translate and literally write down the entire conversation like a script: what she needed to say, what they might ask, how she’d respond.
That’s what survival looked like a few years in. But it wasn’t why she came.
She arrived in 2012 to study. She’d picked a master’s program in public policy, specializing in conflict management, because she wanted to understand something that kept bothering her: Why do politicians cling to power when everything’s falling apart? The Arab Spring had just happened in 2011, and the decisions being made back home didn’t make sense to her. She thought studying conflict would help.
It didn’t, not really. “Each conflict is very unique,” she says now. “To try to solve the conflict in itself, it takes a lot of resources. A lot of effort. A lot of willingness.” The degree didn’t exactly give her answers, but it gave her time to learn German, to figure out how the professional world worked here, to learn how to exist in a place that wasn’t exactly home.
But while she was here, everything changed. The conflict in Yemen escalated. The airport closed.
“My country is in conflict. The airport was closed. There is no way back so I have to make it here,” Suaad says. “I was alone here. I didn’t have anybody to go back to for support.”
Back in Yemen, Suaad questioned things. If she didn’t like something, she pushed back, tried to change it. But in Germany, everything shifted. “It’s a different mindset, because here I need to survive,” she says. “So I did not even reach a point where I said, now I need to challenge or try to make a big change.” She had to focus on the basics first: learning the language, finding work, getting by day to day. Self-actualization could wait, survival came first.
To survive, she made herself smaller, quieter, more careful. She went from someone who spoke her mind to someone who rehearsed conversations, from pushing limits to just trying to fit in. She wasn’t herself anymore, but she didn’t have the luxury to think about that. She had to make it work.
For eight years, she worked as a project manager in migration protection, coordinating between teams and donors and partners, sitting in endless meetings. She was good at it and moved up, eventually becoming head of operations. But somewhere along the way, she realized something was missing. All those meetings, all that coordination, but she wasn’t connecting in the way she wanted to.
She wanted something different. “I wanted to broaden my horizon, have a different challenge,” she says. “I wanted to start something where I can feel like I can contribute, I can make an impact myself. I wanted to be creative and push myself out of my comfort zone.”
In early 2024, Suaad left her job. She moved to Bonn and joined a peace fellowship, a one-year program where participants had to create a practical project. She picked social cohesion, what it means to build peace in a community, and as a migrant herself, she knew where to start.
“I know how difficult it is to be in a place where you don’t speak the language and you don’t have the right social contact,” she says. “I wanted to support other women who have been through this.”
That’s how EmpowerHer started. A social initiative for migrant women and locals alike, a space to connect, to learn, to stop feeling so alone. But more than that, it was Suaad’s way back to herself. Back to the direct contact, the creativity, the impact she’d been craving.
It wasn’t as simple as it sounds. She had a lot of fears: Would women actually show up? Would she get funding? Could she pull it off the way she imagined? The timeline kept shrinking, and she was racing against limited resources, trying to build something real out of uncertainty. But she also had something she hadn’t felt in years: a sense of purpose that wasn’t just about surviving.
The workshops started and women came, but at first, it was hard to tell if it was working. Then one day, Suaad noticed something she’d been hoping for but wasn’t sure would actually happen. Women started arriving early just to talk to each other before the sessions began. They exchanged numbers and met outside the workshops. And when they walked in, they hugged.
“That’s what warms my heart,” Suaad says. She wanted them to know they weren’t alone. “I wanted them to have a space where they can connect, exchange, talk, learn. That was really the essence.”
She was giving them what she’d been missing all these years. Connection, belonging, the feeling that someone actually understood. And in giving it to them, she found it for herself.
The project rebuilt her in ways she didn’t anticipate. “It brought my confidence back,” she says. “Before, I doubted if I can make it. But now I feel like if I set up my mind, and if it is something that I really desire, I’m able to achieve it.”
Running EmpowerHer forced her back out into the world, and she became a social butterfly in the process. She went to every event she could find, networked relentlessly, talked to anyone who would listen. She learned to trust people again, to ask for help without feeling like she was failing.
“Thank God, I found lovely people around me who supported me, and who believed in the idea from day one,” she says. “They kept pushing, and they kept helping. They were telling me it’s good enough to go ahead with it.”
“There is a lot of opportunities here in Germany, if you reach out,” she says. Not everyone will help, but enough people will try that it’s worth putting yourself out there.
The experience taught her more than just networking skills. She also learned to let go, to stop expecting things to go exactly according to plan, to be okay when three or four people showed up instead of a full room. The perfectionism that came from years of trying to prove herself, trying to survive, trying to be good enough? She started releasing it. “I’m adjusting, learning, adapting,” she says.
It’s been more than a decade since Suaad first arrived in Germany. She’s worked through language barriers, unemployment, citizenship, and career changes. She’s gone from questioning everything to becoming quieter to finding something in between, from survival mode to actually creating something, from scripting phone calls in Google Translate to building a community where women don’t have to feel as alone as she once did.
When I ask what she’s taken from all of it, she stops for a moment.
“Trust,” she says. “I believe in a higher power. I believe in God. And I believe that I can overcome, if I could just trust and if you have the right community, the right people around you, the right support. Ask them. And even if it’s tough, you will make it. You will make it. Just keep going. Keep going. There’s no other way. Don’t walk back. Just keep going, day by day.”
This round of EmpowerHer is over, but it’s not the end. Suaad’s planning to bring it back next year. She spent years wishing someone had been there for her when she needed it. Now she’s become that person for others. And she’s not stopping.
