Amela Šabić is one of the entrepreneurs supported by the Tuzla Community Foundation through the Entrepreneurship Fund within the USAID BiH program "Local Works".

It only took six months for Amela Šabić to go from being the owner of an imaginary online cafe to becoming the owner of a restaurant with a unique offer in the entire Tuzla Canton. In a short period of time, this entrepreneur turned her love for food and cooking, and especially coffee, into a small business that she dreamed of for fifteen years.

Its "Dnevna soba", as the cafe bar is called, like no other in the wider Gračanica area, offers, among other things, banana bread with peanut butter, chia pudding, avocado toast, coffee with ice cream, almond, soy or oat milk for breakfast, and for offers fitness enthusiasts healthy shake drinks for before and after exercise. In less than a month, there are already five employees, and with the opening of the summer garden, they will employ another young person.

"I've been dreaming about this for 15 years, but it's always been the kind of dream that you're almost sure won't ever come true, which is why I never made any serious plans to open a cafe. In August of last year, I wrote on Instagram that since I don't have a real cafe, social networks will be my virtual, imaginary cafe, and I shared a recipe. Within a few hours, a friend of mine, who is the daughter of the owner of the building where the "Living Room" is located, contacted me and told me that they had place for rent. When I saw the place, the windows on the entire south and west side, I immediately fell in love whit it and knew that this was it," says this entrepreneur.

That's when she found out that the Tuzla Community Foundation had opened a call for support for future entrepreneurs. When she explained her idea, she got the opportunity to participate in education, and that experience, as she herself said, was invaluable.

"I was delighted with the lectures and it was clear to me that the education itself is worth more than any kind of financial support. All of us must have applied to get that 5,000 KM, but after the education, it didn't matter to me anymore whether I would get a grant or not. This cafe was a huge investment and, even though this grant is not small, the education that lasted for a month was priceless. It opened a new world for me, about which I knew a little. After the education, all doubts about my success where gone", says Amela.

As she says, she didn't get into business to get rich, but to do something she would be proud of and to have a job she would be happy to go to. Although she owns a business, she herself works tirelessly in shifts. This is the only way, she believes, that her dream will be able to live in the years to come.

"I was fulfilled in every field of my life – family, friends, health - but there were moments when I felt that something was missing. Turns out that's what I'm doing now. Everything came at the right moment.“ Dnevna soba“  was the last pirce of my life's puzzle," says this entrepreneur.

Amela Šabić is one of the four participants in the entrepreneurship program of the Tuzla Community Foundation and whose business ideas, created during the education, were financially supported with a total of 20,000 KM. This activity was supported by USAID’s Bosnia and Herzegovina “Local Works” program and carried out by TCF within the activity "Our community is our responsibility".