Palestinian women’s cooperatives create job opportunities for Palestinian women

Since the founding of the Social and Cultural Nashet Association, it has consistently achieved social development in the camps, especially in Saida camps, “Ein El Helwieh and Miye and Miye.” Women Cooperatives were founded in 2016, and the idea, from the beginning, aimed to achieve tangible empowerment based on training and create real job opportunities for Palestinian Women in Camps. This notion is essential to establish the principle of real development based on the opportunity for production.

The Women’s Cooperatives opened “Zewadetna kitchen,” which is specialized in the food and catering industry, equipped with industrial machinery and equipment that enables women to produce jams and sweets that meet health standards. Women Cooperatives launched one-year training courses that benefited 75 women. They underwent food safety courses, meeting health standards, food processing, life skills, women’s cooperative, bookkeeping, marketing, and other courses to empower women to manage this project and provide them with technical skills. The process helped compete with other products in the Lebanese market and achieve an economic profit for the woman and her family.

The women cooperatives provided the necessary technical training for women and job opportunities in Zewadetna, where 40 women work daily according to the market and production needs. They sell their products at Lebanese organic food fairs, and they also supply bakeries and supermarkets with the products.
The women’s cooperatives registered the trademark “Zewadetna” in the Lebanese Ministry of Economic to become a trademark for traditional Palestinian foods produced following international health standards, free of chemicals, preservatives, and colored foods.

Zewadetna is an alternative project that has many programs that support Palestinian women and their cause. It is not a charitable project or a social welfare program; it is an economic project to help the Palestinians in their steadfastness in the diaspora. The goal is also to work to reduce poverty within the Palestinian community in the camps and to strengthen the sources of income for Palestinian families within the employment of the largest possible number of women from Ein El Helwieh and Miye and Miye camps inside the food factory “ Zewadetna.”