Stepping into Porto Gifts and Gifts, a tourist shop on a busy street of Porto, Portugal, dark stone buildings with intricate features and tilings are left behind for clean, modern white walls and brightly colored cloth goods. The din of street traffic and pedestrians fade away, leaving only the strains of a trumpet played by a street performer on the sidewalk and the quiet sound of a radio playing behind the register.

 

Here, Sonia Amoram, a young woman of 21 years, spends her days selling souvenirs to tourists, a job where she enjoys meeting different people.

 

“Some people like to talk a lot with us and tell their story and tell about their trip. I think it is interesting for me to know and every day it’s different,” she says.

 

After graduating high school two years ago, Amoram worked for a year in a tourist office before moving to Porto Gifts and Gifts at the suggestion of her boss. In addition to working, she is studying tourism at the Instituto Universitário Da Maia (ISMAI), a university in Maia, Portugal.

 

When asked what her goals for the future are, she simply said, “I would like to create something of my own.” This something is a business, probably a touristic shop like the one she is in. Her inspiration? Family.

 

“All the people of my family have a business so I figure these things grow with me”, she reflects.

 

However, Amoram would rather follow their spirit of small business ownership than join in the already established family supermarket stating that, "I want to create something I like...I think it’s important that you work for pleasure not work for... an obligation.”

 

A supermarket is not quite interesting enough for her.

 

Amoram anticipates that the largest obstacle for her dream of opening a small business is finding funding for it. She says that "in Portugal [it] is not easy to earn money.” She has plenty of ideas for management and for businesses, but she does not have a plan to fund these dreams.

 

This reflects the fact that Portugal is still recovering from the hard economic times it faced as a result of the 2008 financial crash and money can still be scarce.

 

Her end goal is to “attract more people…to Portugal.” If this does not clearly display her sense of nationalism, her response to the suggestion that she might build her business outside of Portugal will remove all doubt:

 

“I will make something good for my country, Portugal, not another cities or another countries, no.”

 

She grew up near Porto and her efforts will benefit her home.

 

Amoram does not have the details of her future ironed out, but she does have a strong foundation of values– she will do something that she enjoys and her actions will benefit her country.