MIFTAH
Thursday, 28 March. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

As part of its efforts to promote the role of and empower women in various fields and as part of its project “Empowerment of Women through grants for income-generating projects in rural areas” , MIFTAH supports women in the Jerusalem and Jordan Valley districts with funding from the Arab Fund.

MIFTAH first carries out exchange visits before handing over the projects to the beneficiary women; they are also required to partake in a training course on project management because of the cooperative and collective nature of the projects.

Ibtisam Al Masri is from the Jerusalem-area village of Jeeb and is a beneficiary of the project. She has taken on a successful beekeeping project granted to her and a group of women in the village by MIFTAH.

Ibtisam is a mother of seven (five girls and two boys) and has been head of the Jeeb’s women and children’s center since 2007. She also manages a number of home projects such as raising sheep and bees.

Ibtisam admits that the initial reason she turned to MIFTAH was for lack of funding for the center. She said she was introduced to MIFTAH two years ago through a friend who runs a women’s center in the nearby village of Nabi Samuel, who told her that MIFTAH supports women’s initiatives much like the center she runs. She explains that MIFTAH was very receptive when they heard about her work and suggested that the women organize themselves as a group to work on a honey-making project.

“So that’s what we did,” she says. “Five women got together including myself and MIFTAH provided us with boxes of bees and we started to work .”

Ibtisam then talks about her women and children’s center. “We established it in 2007,” she says. “It is a charitable society that helps women, explaining that the board of directors is comprised of women from the village. “We received government funding in the beginning but this unfortunately did not continue. Now the center’s work has thinned out because of this lack of funds,” she says. Still, she is determined to continue keeping the center alive. “We worked so hard to get it established,” Ibtisam maintains. “Besides it is a well-known establishment among others like it.”

Ibtisam continues that even though MIFTAH may provide all of the components for the project’s success, it is the group work and commitment by the women that will ultimately keep it going. “The difficulty of any project lies at the beginning. So how do you think the situation was when you have a project that has already been run into the ground and needs to be resurrected?” She admits that the project did not work out like they had hoped it would in the first year, mostly she says because they spent most of their energy on purchases and repair of the boxes. In 2013, however, MIFTAH offered its support again and this time, it made a huge difference.

“This is what sets it apart from other institutions,” she says, the fact that MIFTAH stuck with them. The organization provided them with 10 new bee boxes with which they were able to lift the project back up on its feet. “This year alone we got around 48 kilos of honey from just five or six boxes,” Ibtisam says proudly. “Now we are waiting for September and I suspect the returns from the other boxes will be huge.” She credits the team work between the five women for their success, saying that even on cold days we would go to check the boxes and feed the hives. Last winter, she says, they even lost around eight boxes from the cold, “but we insisted to keep going.”

Still, she says beekeeping is not an easy process and needs expertise and knowledge. So, the women asked if MIFTAH could offer them a course that would teach them what they needed to know in the beekeeping business, which MIFTAH did. She says they even kept in touch with the engineer who helped them out and who still comes to check on the beehives and give them the necessary instructions.

Their hard work was not in vain. Ibtisam said the project started generating its own money. Two years into it, she says the women cover all of their costs and make a profit as well. “Recently, each woman in the group was given seven kilos,” Ibtisam says. “We all market it though personal acquaintances in the village, which has worked because the villagers mostly trust our product because it is natural.”

She goes on: “This financial independence which the ladies are enjoying has reflected on their self-confidence whether inside their families or in their community. Now they participate in the family expenses and therefore share in the decision-making. Their time is now invested in something that benefits themselves and their families,” Ibtisam says. Thankfully, she also says her family has been very supportive and always stands by her side. Her husband is even an added-value to her work she says, since he is a carpenter and makes some of their furniture or tools. So far she says, she has found a balance between working both inside and outside the home, which she also largely credits her family with. “Thankfully, all of my work is close to where I live. The beekeeping project is on my land and the center works out of my house because we cannot afford to rent a place.”

Ibtisam expressed her gratitude towards MIFTAH for empowering the women of Jeeb economically and for always following up on the project it began with them. “This is part of what encourages us to continue,” she says. “We are proud of the success of our project and want to develop it even more,” inviting anyone interested to come and see it.

 
 
Read More...
 
Footer
Contact us
Rimawi Bldg, 3rd floor
14 Emil Touma Street,
Al Massayef, Ramallah
Postalcode P6058131

Mailing address:
P.O.Box 69647
Jerusalem
 
 
Palestine
972-2-298 9490/1
972-2-298 9492
info@miftah.org

 
All Rights Reserved © Copyright,MIFTAH 2023
Subscribe to MIFTAH's mailing list
* indicates required