The founder
Juliette Zeidan or Jiji, as everyone calls her, is a mother of 2, a wife, and a certified midwife. Born into a family of four sisters and raised in a charming village in the mountains of Lebanon, Jiji was raised on family values that she embodied throughout her life and her career.
Her journey as a midwife started in 1993 with her studies at the Lebanese university. She had an interest in the medical field, but her choice of midwifery was particularly exceptional to her as it deals more with a human's happiest moment of life, delivering a new life. She delivered more than 500 babies until Wakim happened!
Wakim is Jiji's husband. They got married in 2001 and life pushed them to leave their country and live in Kuwait. They had their firstborn in 2002, Christian. Being away from her mother and family, Jiji had to navigate her pregnancy, motherhood, and the fatherhood of Wakim with her own professional knowledge. As her son grew and then had her second child, Tatiana, Jiji felt that both children needed to connect to their roots in Lebanon. To do that, she felt that teaching them her childhood nursery rhymes would be a good start. This is when Toofoola.com was born.
The Birth Of Toofoola.com
Jiji started writing down the rhymes she could remember and post them on her personal blog (at that time blogs were a trendy thing). She looked for books and asked other mothers for rhymes they could remember. The blog grew. Then one day, Jiji started telling her friends about it. Friends started sharing those rhymes, but they wanted more from Jiji, it turns out. They wanted her help and support throughout their pregnancy and motherhood as they too were away from their mothers back home. At that moment, inspired by their need, Jiji started feeding the blog with articles discussing different topics based on her personal experience, as a mother and a wife, and her professional experience as a midwife. The blog Toofoola.com became this side thing that she enjoyed doing while helping and consulting close friends on a regular basis.
10 Years Later
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and after working in the corporate world for more than 18 years, Jiji decided to focus on her passion Toofoola.com and make it her full focus and full-time job.
Realizing the role technology played in delivering her content since day one through the blogsite, Jiji decided to continue on this path by capitalizing on her content delivery through social media and podcasting. She creates and delivers weekly content to her audience through Instagram, facebook and the website, and bi-weekly audio content through her podcast. Her Arabic podcast titled “Ahlieh Be Mahalieh” delivers 7 to 8 episodes per season and is available across all major podcast directories such as Apple, Spotify, Google, Anghami and more.
Although a professional healthcare in her own right, Jiji still believes that the advice of a parent or grandparent to a parent or parent-to-be is priceless. Yet combining it with medical and professional know-how will definitely help today's parents navigate the fast-changing daily challenges in having and raising children, specifically in the Arab region and Africa. And this is the ground upon which her philosophy of content creation is built.