Until recently, Maly Turysh, a hamlet of some 80 people in Russia’s Urals region, could have been considered a dying village. Enter young entrepreneur Guzel Sanzhopova, who left Moscow to help her father, a struggling local beekeeper, start a family-run, organic candy business here.
“When I thought all this up, I didn’t think about money. I thought about how to solve the village’s and my father’s [financial] problem and do something with the excess honey production,” she told reporters on a 2016 press tour.
Like much of the Russian countryside, Maly Turysh, located about 250 kilometers west of the regional seat, Yekaterinburg, found itself without a lifeline once the Soviet economy collapsed.
Though Sanzhopova’s business, Cocco Bello, remains small-scale, her idea appears to have given villagers not only a much-needed source of income, but a newfound sense of purpose.
“When I thought all this up, I didn’t think about money. I thought about how to solve the village’s and my father’s [financial] problem and do something with the excess honey production,” she told reporters on a 2016 press tour.
Like much of the Russian countryside, Maly Turysh, located about 250 kilometers west of the regional seat, Yekaterinburg, found itself without a lifeline once the Soviet economy collapsed.
Though Sanzhopova’s business, Cocco Bello, remains small-scale, her idea appears to have given villagers not only a much-needed source of income, but a newfound sense of purpose.