BEIRUT, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hussein Hamdan turned a room in his parents' house in the town of Hasbaya, in the southeast of Lebanon, into a small workshop to package olive oil as Christmas gifts, enabling the young man to sell them and secure his university tuition fees.

Using his creative imagination, the young man prepares bottles of oil in various sizes and wrap them with paper rolls, also decorated with Christmas designs such as a red cloth tie.

Hamdan told Xinhua that the weakening of the Lebanese currency in parallel to the deteriorating economic situation after COVID-19 outbreak pushed him to find ways to secure his tuition fees which have increased threefold this year.

"I chose to invest in olive oil because of large areas of olive orchards in Lebanon but the inability of farmers to sell their produce," Hamdan said, adding that farmers have to store their produce to be sold later.

For her part, Sawsan Abu Al-Ezz, with the help of her 60-year-old mother, makes at home soap from olive oil in a corner of her yard in the southern town of Ein Qiniyye.

While she was pouring the cooked soap liquid into wooden pans, Abu El-Ezz told Xinhua that she was able to secure some earnings out of making homemade soap which would help her in pursuing her university studies.

She places two soaps in one package box using fabric strips with Christmas designs.

"I started decorating soap bars by inserting pictures and slogans inspired by the Christmas, to make special gifts for the occasion," she said.

Abu El-Ezz explained that she has gained great confidence from her customers, most of them housewives, who praised excellent quality of her products.

Another student Jawdat Monzer told Xinhua that he has stored olive oil in multi-sized glass containers to sell them in popular markets at reasonable prices since more and more people cannot afford to buy olive oil cans with regular big sizes, such as 16 kg or 8 kg per can.

The soaring price of U.S. dollar in Lebanon has prompted several universities to calculate tuition fees at a rate of 3,900 Lebanese pounds per one dollar, more than double of the official rate of 1,515, which created huge problems for students without extra incomes.

Meanwhile, a big number of parents have lost their jobs given the dire economic situation in the country and the outbreak of COVID-19 which drove thousands of companies out of business.

Lebanese students were able, in the past years, to secure jobs to pay part of or full tuition fees, but the economic collapse now and the closure of businesses caused the layoff of thousands of employees as job opportunities are increasingly scarce.

Moreover, many students used to rely on bank loans to finance their tuition, which has become unavailable amid the collapse of the banking system. Enditem

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