Ramallah – MIFTAH’s beneficiaries in villages northwest of Jerusalem went through a series of training courses as part of the organization’s project to empower women through small income-generating projects.

Six women from villages and towns northwest of Jerusalem – Fatima, Rawhiya, Jamalat, Buthayna, Reema and Samihah – participated in a training course entitled “Communication and messaging – building a team and negotiating over a resolution to the conflict” given by expert trainer Fida’ Barghouti.

Fatima Rashid is from the village of Beit Dukko and a mother of two children. A beneficiary of the training course, she says it taught her better ways of communicating with the customers of her clothes and shoe shop. “Before the training, I used to be very short with the customers, especially the ones who would come and take merchandise on credit.” Today she says things are different. ‘I am more capable of handling them and understanding their financial situations, which is why they are sometimes forced to take things on loan.”

Project coordinator for MIFTAH, Hanan Saeed says the goal of such training is to empower and build the capacities of the participants in the skills of communicating and negotiating in addition to learning skills in conflict resolution. She maintains that the end goal of this training is to understand the real needs of women and to promote their role and participation in their communities.

Gender expert Fida’ Barghouti summarizes the goal of the training as an introduction to the concepts of communication and the conditions for success including the importance of team work. She also says the women are introduced to the most important skills needed for building a team along with pointing out the factors that will destroy it. Other learning points included the negotiating process, and the key conditions for negotiating, which is communication, dialogue and clarity of goal. The participants are taught skills within a participatory approach for negotiating such as brainstorming, dividing into groups, role playing and case studies.

Barghouti explained that this group of women also receives special attention in terms of their psycho-social conditions, that is, more focus is put on family violence.

She continued that the participants came out with a group of recommendations, namely; the importance of a needs-assessment for the targeted women in these villages; taking into consideration the exclusivity of the area in which these women live; the need to target men in this area at the family and community levels given that they could pose an obstacle to the empowerment of the women in charge of economic and social projects. The women all agreed on the importance of investing in the various local media outlets to showcase their stories of hardship and therefore raise awareness and invest in these stories in MIFTAH trainings in the districts. This, they say, will help to bring their stories closer to the other beneficiaries in these trainings and help to offer a diagnosis of the reality and suggestions for problem-solving.