#OmanPride: Fatima Hamayon, overcoming the challenges

More sports Wednesday 22/February/2017 19:34 PM
By: Times News Service
#OmanPride: Fatima Hamayon, overcoming the challenges

Age is just a number, especially when you know your talents and your potential very early in your life. This is an inspirational story of a popular social media influencer, emcee, entrepreneur, and artist, Fatima Hamayon, born to a Pakistani father and Filipino/Spanish mother, and raised in Oman.

Fatima is the name and face you will see at sundry social events, either on the stage hosting the event or warmly interacting and socialising with the crowd or frantically running up and down, coordinating with models and other organisers. This multitalented multi-tasker has managed to earn herself a credible name at a very young age. Her journey of exploring herself started way back in her school days.

Fatima was a very bright girl right from her early school days. She wanted to explore her own potential and find new platforms to showcase her skills. At the age of 16, she discovered knowledge- oman.com, a forum where she could express herself by contributing articles on a wide range of subjects. While working for a charity event organised by the forum, a packet of fabric paint accidentally landed in her bag.

Since she didn’t want to throw it away, she decided to experiment with it on one of her old T-shirts. Being an artist, and happy with the result, she decided to post a picture of her fabric painted T-shirt on Facebook. The reactions that followed were overwhelming and unexpected, which didn’t just boost her confidence but also gave her an idea of turning her hobby into a side job.

Soon she started posting on Facebook as she didn’t have the money to own a boutique. She received great response and eventually turned an investment of OMR15 into a business that gave a return of OMR350 per month. However, during this whole period, her father was completely unaware of what his daughter was up to as she knew that he wouldn’t approve of it.

There were times when she would have to tiptoe out of the house to get her T-shirts delivered to her customers and then get back in surreptitiously, without her dad coming to know. Fortunately or otherwise, her work started gaining media attention and various publications across Oman wanted to feature her work, which was fresh, unique, and very interesting.

The little girl had to try hard to hide her fame from her dad and often had to take away all the magazines and newspapers that would carry her interviews to make sure that they never caught her dad’s attention. The turning point in her life was when her father, who was the breadwinner of the family, met with an accident.

The Hamayon family had to face a series of difficult circumstances, and soon their business had to be shut down. They didn’t even have the money to pay the house rent. This is when Fatima brought all her savings that she had stacked up in an envelope as she didn’t know what to do with the money and since she knew explaining all this to her dad would be difficult, she gave him all the clippings of the articles in newspapers and magazines about her work.

Her dad remained silent but she could see the pride in his eyes. From there on, there was no stopping for Fatima Hamayon. Instead of giving up and cursing her fate for the misfortune that had struck her family, she decided to take things in her hands and be the change maker.

She developed her business, tried her hand at marketing, made contacts, and eventually made a name for herself in Oman. Today she is the successful owner of New Heights Agency, a top modelling agency in Oman, emcee’s the most high profile events of the country, and is considered a very strong social media influencer in the community. For her it is the desire for learning and the courage of trying that has got her where she is today.
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