The struggling Michigan economy has been known to close a lot of doors for hard-working people.

But sometimes, the need to adapt and find creative new ways to make a living opens doors as well.

That just might be the case with Nofila Seklawi, a 24-year old Henry Ford Community College student from Dearborn who created and writes for the new Web site Arabtoo.com, which launched in July 2008.

Seklawi and her husband Hilal used to run a granite countertop installation business in Hazel Park called Ultimate Stone Art, but eventually, fierce competition from other companies drove down the prices and made her have to look for new ways to make money.

She didn’t have any web editing or publishing skills, but after buying Dreamweaver and Sitebuilder software, Seklawi eventually learned how to create professional-looking Web sites.

Arabtoo.com is the first of many of her creations, and the project she is currently the most invested in. The site strives to be a positive reflection of the young Arab American community in Dearborn and features updates on entertainment and other community events as well as announcements and articles.

Stories on up-and-coming young musicians, artists, and other people of interest are a big part of the site’s features. A sports section is also in the works.

“The site is just to provide something interesting for people to look at,” said Seklawi. “So many young people have so much talent and creativity; they’re doing their own thing and I think it’s interesting.”

Community service is also a focus of the site. Another forthcoming feature is a section that will help immigrants and non-English speakers with things like paperwork for Social Security and Medicaid including documents they can download and print.

While the site doesn’t earn much right now, selling just one paid ad so far, Seklawi thinks it has a chance to be in the future and is patient enough to see it through.

In the meantime, she has used her newfound Web site creation skills to build sites for other people like detroitautorepair.com and myeagletravel.net. The site building enables her to show off her creative side while making money and learning new tricks to apply to Arabtoo.com at the same time.

The Web skills are new but Seklawi has had the journalism skills necessary to succeed for a while. She was the editor-in-chief of The Mirror News at HFCC in 2003 and the experience she gained there was invaluable.

“The main thing I learned from that was just keeping everything together, organization skills, planning, and keeping a team together,” she said. “I had to stay on top of everything.”

For now, that team is just her and Hilal. She characterizes the work distribution as a “50/50 thing.”

“I do most of the grunt work but he offers great ideas,” she said. “He’s very creative and smart. When I get stuck I just ask him what I should do.”

Sometimes it’s hard to make time for Arabtoo.com considering that Seklawi has two young kids in addition to her academic career. She wants to transfer to Detroit Mercy in the winter to study architecture as well. For now, Seklawi tries to update the site with current events every few days or once a week at the minimum.

It’s all about bringing together a community of young people in Dearborn and giving them somewhere to go in order to find out what’s going on in and around the city. In other words, to bring the community closer together, which is what gave her the inspiration for the site’s name.

“It was originally going to be Arab too, like two words meaning ‘us too,’ she said. “But we changed it to Arabtoo because it’s actually a word in Arabic that means to bring closer, or coming closer.”