The village council of Marah Rabah is one of MIFTAH’s proudest success stories. Its women took part in the training offered by MIFTAH’s Women in Elections Support Program and were among those who stood out the most.
Their experience with MIFTAH and the successes they scored in their village council, located southeast of Bethlehem, were discussed in a meeting held by MIFTAH. The goal of the meeting was to become acquainted with the experiences of Marah Rabah’s village council, a village in the remote areas east of Bethlehem. The village is a success for several reasons, including the fact that its residents have a true and sincere sense of belonging to their village. They made their village, the population of which is no more than 1,700 people, a role model for other villages, towns and even cities in the West Bank.
This is the impression that MIFTAH’s coordinators got when they conducted an exchange visit with Marah Rabah. They listened to the village council head Ibrahim Al Sheikh, who told them how the village pulled itself up based on their own human resources – their youth, men, women and children. Two council members, Manal and Sharifeh confirmed this to be true. They recounted details of how their village was able to buy land to build the village council headquarters from donations from all the villagers; how they then obtained a piece of land to build a hall and a multi-purposed women’s center built from the generous donation of an anonymous person who first donated the land to build a mosque. When he heard about the need of the village for a hall and center, he agreed to the council’s request and the mosque was built on the second floor.
In an exchange visit with other village council members from Beit Ummar, Nueima and Dyouk held at the women’s center Rasha Mousa, MIFTAH’s field worker talked about the reasons that prompted her to choose Marah Rabah to showcase the experience of its village council to allow other councils to benefit from its successes. Mousa says she had a meeting about two months ago in the village and was blown away by the construction progress she saw along with the clean roads and most importantly, the extent of cooperation between the council and the villagers. “The people had such a strong affiliation to their village and to their little homeland, Marah Rabah,” Mousa said, “We wanted to convey this experience to other councils, especially since we showed so much support for women members of the council both here and in other village councils.”
Everyone was eager to hear what Ibrahim Al Sheikh, head of the council had to say, as he told the story of how his village stood on its own two feet. Especially attentive were the guests from the Beit Ummar, Nueima and Dyouk village councils as they tried to learn from this experience to solve their own problems at home.
“Abu Yousef” as Al Sheikh is known, explained to his guests how they wanted to build a school and searched for ways to fund the project. He said the villagers did not hesitate to donate their own money – each villager contributed JD20 and eventually were able to buy land. An additional piece was donated by villagers. They built a girls’ school, securing Belgian funding and built the women’s center that includes a meeting and celebrations hall, a clinic and a gym for women. “But our biggest capital was our people who rushed to volunteer their money, time and effort,” he said.
The two women council members, Manal and Sharifeh also spoke about their experiences. They said the beginning was not easy in a society that hardly accepts women in decision-making positions even at the level of local councils. It took time, but they were finally accepted, motivating other women to participate and take action. They credit much of their success to the training they received from MIFTAH, which they said “strengthened our abilities and boosted our trust in the decision-making process.”
Successes among women were also discussed in other village councils, such as Najat Rmeiliyeh who talked about her experience in the Nueima village council and the accomplishments she achieved through her work with MIFTAH. She said she was able to establish a number of charitable societies and cooperatives, the most recent being a sheep breeding project with an expected 108 beneficiary families.
The meeting was deemed fruitful by all, particularly the women. This is because the male members of the local council showed their support for raising the women’s quota and enabling women to actively participate in decision-making.
'Cake and Vanilla': One story of success
Date posted: May 05, 2022
By MIFTAH
Ramallah – In the village of “Jadeera” northwest of Jerusalem, Sally Suleiman and a group of friends chose an old abandoned building as a launching point for their project “Cake and Vanilla”. Since then, they have consistently increased the sale of their date and nut cookies, first in their village and then later, in areas around and beyond Ramallah and even inside the Green Line. The women now create a quality, well-marketed product after honing their online marketing skills, creating and running their own website and being part of other similar websites to display their baked goods.
MIFTAH: Financial and technical support
Sally and her project partners admit that their success would never have been possible if it were not for MIFTAH’s support, providing them with the necessary equipment and appliances and working to develop their financial administration and marketing skills.
“MIFTAH was a huge support,” Sally says. “It gave us material and technical support, which motivated us to push forward and reach as many people as possible. Today, ‘Cake and Vanilla’ is a household name, not just in Jadeera but in areas in and around Ramallah and all over Palestine.”
Challenges and Obstacles
Sally mostly cites marketing challenges due to competition and gaps in the market in places they have difficulty accessing. She also points to the interminable problem of funding the website. MIFTAH, she says, helped them with ways to tackle this issue through providing them with training in online marketing, website management and funding with the goal of reaching a broader public.
Socio-economic impacts
Sally maintains that the project has tangibly improved their social and economic statuses and has allowed them to become more acquainted with society. She also says it boosted their confidence and their ability to depend on themselves and that their newfound economic empowerment had a positive impact for them within their own households and communities.
Community development project
MIFTAH project coordinator for community development and income-generating projects, Hanan Said, said these interventions with young female university graduates are part of MIFTAH’s efforts to empower women and integrate them in the labor market. The projects also give them the opportunity for financial independence and for developing their personal and professional skills. This, Said maintains, will allow them to carry out an effective role by reflecting the positive impact of women’s economic participation, in addition to elevating women’s statuses in their communities.
The tale of three female university students and their construction materials project
Date posted: February 09, 2022
By MIFTAH
Ramallah – Sarah, Rimah and Aya are three young women from the villages of Beit Iksa and Beit Dukko, northwest of Jerusalem, who ventured into an innovated project like no Palestinian women before them.
The first step on their road to success was MIFTAH, which has and continues to work towards supporting Palestinian women in the West Bank and in the Jerusalem district in particular, by providing small income-generating projects.
Sarah and Rimah are still university students while their colleague, Aya, is already graduated and works full-time with the project. The women tapped into their local communities’ needs, seeing how construction projects were mushrooming in their area. This, they realized, meant they could easily obtain construction materials if they had the means, including jacks and winches.
For Sarah Liqyaniyeh from Beit Ikas, who graduated with a degree in design and décor, their project to rent out construction materials and equipment was a way of fulfilling the needs of their communities. “No other woman or girl has ever thought up this idea before,” she says. “The project entails renting out construction supplies and equipment – jacks and iron elbows and other materials. This is a project that girls and women are probably not used to hearing about, whether in our villages or in other areas. Projects for women almost always revolve around food or embroidery. My colleagues and I wanted to do something different, something only for us, which would allow us to depend on ourselves. So we chose a project that no one has ever done before.”
She continues, “I studied and worked in design and décor and I have also worked in the field at construction sites. During discussions and conversations with my family and others in my village, I heard them talking about buying construction equipment and renting it from outside the village. This is when I had the idea for our project. I said to myself:
Why shouldn’t I be doing this? It’s a sure thing.” So, I pitched the idea to my two colleagues and they were both enthusiastic about it and thought it was a great idea. Our families were also supportive and even our local communities, which helped us find an easy and quick way to obtain the necessary construction equipment and materials. We have reaped profitable financial returns too, and hope one day we will be able to expand. Hopefully, MIFTAH will continue to support us; after all, it was the one that put us on this path.”
Supporting vital projects such as this one for Palestinian women in several West Bank districts has been a MIFTAH intervention for years. It is part of its “Women’s Empowerment” project, which supports small-income generating projects in cooperation with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.
MIFTAH project manager, Hanan Said maintains: “The success story this project was able to achieve, whether in terms of impacting or changing the realities of over 400 Palestinian women and their families in rural areas, cities, or marginalized areas, is that these projects empowered and improved the social and economic lives of women. MIFTAH’s interventions have succeeded in reaching women, particularly the marginalized, in over 70 locations in Jericho and the Jordan Valley, the Ramallah/Al Bireh and the Jerusalem districts,” she says. Said continues that MIFTAH works on an almost annual basis, in cooperation with the Arab Fund, to reach new groups of women in various areas and offer them the necessary support to contribute to their economic participation in Palestinian society, with a focus on Jerusalem and its suburbs.
Through its support for women, MIFTAH seeks to increase opportunities for young women especially, to enable them to participate in the labor market and assume an active and influential role in creating positive patterns of economic participation for women, ultimately elevating their status in their respective communities. MIFTAH takes into consideration the needs of marginalized women by economically empowering underprivileged women through small grants.
