A
C
2021-2025
Finca
{USA}
The partnership with FINCA, spanning four years, produced a body of work that captures the enduring spirit of people negotiating the weight of origin and inequality.
A unified visual library was built across Armenia, Jordan, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana.
These photographs, and the stories behind them, now anchor FINCA’s brand, serving as testimony to the alignment of potential and opportunity.
Image: Greta Ohanyan. Tsovazard, Armenia
Ibrid, Jordan
The Al Mikdad family fled Syria when war broke out and their political views placed them at risk under the regime. Their eldest son remained behind to care for grandparents unable to leave. The rest of the family endured years in a refugee camp before eventually finding a home in Irbid, just twenty-two kilometres from the border of their homeland.
With a micro-finance loan they opened a bakery, drawing on their skills to serve hundreds of locals each day with traditional Syrian bread. The business became both a livelihood and a way of keeping memory alive in exile.
As the bakery grew, tragedy struck. Their eldest son, still in Syria, was shot and killed by a sniper while buying bread for his grandparents. His loss shadows every success, yet the bakery endures — a place where grief and survival meet, and where the act of baking carries the weight of both remembrance and renewal.
Irbid, Jordan
22 km
Daraa, Syria
In Irbid, the Al Mikdads live just twenty-two kilometres from the Syrian border. Close enough to see home on the horizon. A distance measured in more than miles.
The family bakery — built on khubz, the everyday bread of Syria.
Parents holding on to the image of their eldest son.
Ibrid, Jordan
The Al Mikdad family fled Syria when war broke out and their political views placed them at risk under the regime. Their eldest son remained behind to care for grandparents unable to leave. The rest of the family endured years in a refugee camp before eventually finding a home in Irbid, just twenty-two kilometres from the border of their homeland.
With a micro-finance loan they opened a bakery, drawing on their skills to serve hundreds of locals each day with traditional Syrian bread. The business became both a livelihood and a way of keeping memory alive in exile.
As the bakery grew, tragedy struck. Their eldest son, still in Syria, was shot and killed by a sniper while buying bread for his grandparents. His loss shadows every success, yet the bakery endures — a place where grief and survival meet, and where the act of baking carries the weight of both remembrance and renewal.
Tsovazard, Armenia
Mr. and Mrs. Al Mikdad
A Syrian couple rebuilding their lives after the war. Their eldest son, who had stayed behind to care for his grandparents, was killed while trying to buy bread. With support from FINCA, they turned their skill for baking into a business that now sustains the family.
Greta's son, Hayk, following in his father's footsteps, raises cattle in Armenia's hinterlands.
Greta
Grandmothers like Greta Ohanyan are investing not only in the sustainability of the family farm, but in the education of their granddaughters. Across rural Armenia, microfinance is reshaping priorities: once reserved for agriculture, loans are now funding university tuition, books, and fees. Despite seasonal incomes and uncertain harvests, families are choosing to invest in daughters’ futures, creating opportunities beyond farming and redefining what the next generation can aspire to.