Women Cooperative Societies (WCS)
The women’s cooperatives were founded in 2016 with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Lebanon. The idea from the beginning was aimed at achieving tangible empowerment based on training and creating a real job opportunity for Palestinian women in The Ein el-Hilweh camp. This program is based on the principle of real development based on the existence of an opportunity for production.
The project plan, therefore, included the following steps:
- Training: 75 women who participated in training in the production of food items (Palestinian food, jams, sweets, dryers, pastries, etc.) on a practical basis that meets the standards of the World Health Organization. Experts from Palestine, Tunisia, Lebanon participated in the training.
- Palestinian Cuisine: The establishment of a place equipped with modern equipment to enable women to move from training to vocational production based on a productive business plan that considers the market’s requirements.
- Marketing: Move to examine the market’s acceptability of women’s products through women’s marketing-trained elements.
- Achieving self-sufficiency: Depending on the quality of the goods produced and their competitiveness, despite the difficult circumstances in Lebanon, the cooperatives (Zeweditina), worked to achieve great self-sufficiency and has been able to achieve up to 70% self-sufficiency.
- Emphasizing training: The completion of the steps
One of the most important outcomes of the women’s cooperative project (Zeweditina) was to train women in quality skills and the employment of those who can work professionally. Then they rely on the profits resulting from sales and marketing to support their families. 10 working women who receive their salaries monthly, in addition to 40 women who work according to working hours.