KAREEMAA Musa and her husband Hamid had been planning to open their own Subway takeaway when Hamid died unexpectedly in 2017.
But Kareemaa vowed to carry on and yesterday achieved her goal opening the new Subway franchise at the Peel Retail Park, on Harborough Hill Road.
Kareemaa, 47, of Rotherham, and Hamid had previously been owners of convenience store Hough Lane Stores in Wombwell, but the pair, who have two daughters Hannah and Ayaana aged 14 and nine, decided to sell up the business in 2014 to pursue their dream of moving into the catering industry.
After starting the application process to open a Subway shop, the couple got the good news that they had been accepted officially to become ‘franchisees’.
However soon after and before settling on a site for their store, Hamid died from a heart condition, after which Kareemaa had to decide whether to carry on alone.
She decided to proceed, but not before channelling her efforts into fund-raising in her husband’s memory, to open a new school in Sudan.
“I said to my daughter ‘why don’t we do a fundraiser in dad’s memory’ and when I asked her, her face lit up.
“So we went ahead and went through a charity called the Penny Appeal which works in 33 crisis-hit countries to help homeless people.
“The girls set up a fund-raising page called Hamid’s Helping Hands and within eight weeks we managed to raise £11,000, but if you raise £15,000 for the charity that’s enough money to build a school in a third world country.
“We managed to raise a total of £16,500.
“On our page we promised we’d give money to emergency funds to third world countries so we gave £15,000 to the school in Sudan and the rest was given to that.”
Kareemaa said she was pleased to finally open up her new shop after years of dreaming about doing so.
“When my husband passed in 2017 I had to make a decision about if I would go ahead with everything or not,” said Kareemaa.
“I discussed all the options with my the children and after which we decided that we would go ahead.
“We found a Derby site but that fell through so I spoke with the development agent at Subway and they managed to find a place in Barnsley.
“When me and Hamid were talking about locations he said to me that if we could get space in the Peel Centre Retail Park it would be great, so when I found out we could get a plot there I thought it was meant to be.”
Kareemaa held the grand opening of her new franchise yesterday.
