From island training rooms to a handbook: one coach's guide for Maldivian entrepreneurs

The training room was quiet except for the sound of pens on paper. Women from a handful of southern islands sat in small groups, sketching out business ideas on flip charts. Some had a fish product they wanted to sell. Others had a tailoring skill they had never turned into income. Aminath Ali walked between the tables, asking questions, pushing them to think past the idea stage.

That scene, repeated across several islands over the past few years, became the seed of a book. This month, "Vuna-Yaaru," a handbook for Maldivian entrepreneurs, launched in Male. The Book Writers Association of Maldives (BWAM) released it alongside 13 other titles at an event marking this year's Writers' Day.

Aminath is a business coach from S. Hithadhoo in Addu City. She founded HaliAli Coaching and Consultancy and co-founded the Southern Community Empowerment Association of Maldives (SCEAM). For more than a decade, she has trained small business owners across the country, with a particular focus on women entrepreneurs.

"Vuna-Yaaru" grew directly out of that fieldwork. The book takes its name from a project Aminath started to promote women's economic empowerment through business skills training, mentorship, and market access. Training sessions ran on several islands before she decided the guidance needed to exist somewhere entrepreneurs could return to after a workshop ended.

"Entrepreneurship is not something an idea alone can achieve," Aminath writes in the book. She describes it as a long journey that takes patience to complete. Success, she writes, does not begin with waiting for perfect conditions. It begins with the courage to start.

The handbook walks through the full arc of building a business: spotting an opportunity, planning, marketing, sales, financial management, leadership, and keeping a business sustainable once it is running. It is written as a practical, portable guide rather than a textbook, aimed at people just starting out as much as those already trading.

That gap, between having a business idea and having the tools to sustain one, is not unique to the Maldives. Research from the International Finance Corporation has pointed to a persistent financing and skills gap facing small and medium enterprises across South Asia, particularly for women-led businesses seeking to move from informal trading into structured, growing enterprises. Local training materials that address planning and financial management directly, in familiar language and context, are one of the tools researchers point to for narrowing that gap.

For Aminath, the purpose of the book goes beyond commerce. "The real purpose of business is not only financial profit," she has said. "It is about creating opportunities and building people toward a better future."

BWAM organizers framed the launch as part of a broader push to put Maldivian expertise into print, giving local professionals a platform to document knowledge built through years of hands-on work rather than imported material. Aminath's book was one of 14 released at the same event, spanning a range of subjects from Maldivian writers.

Aminath has received national and international recognition for her community work, including a World Woman Award for Leadership and a Woman of Substance Award. But those close to her training programs describe the recognition as secondary to the slower work of showing up on different islands, year after year, to help someone turn a kitchen table idea into a registered business.

The practical test for "Vuna-Yaaru" will come off the page in whether entrepreneurs who read it actually use it when they hit the hard parts, pricing a product, managing cash flow, or deciding whether to grow. Ali's own advice, drawn from years in those training rooms, is not to wait until every part of the plan feels ready.

Start, she writes, with the courage to begin. The rest can be learned along the way.