Women’s economic growth through eco-tourism

Description

The project supports the socio-economically vulnerable Souf and Sakeb villages around Al Ma’wa Wildlife Sanctuary in Jerash governorate by empowering local women and youth to initiate and sustain eco-tourism initiatives as a tool to improve their living conditions and create new job opportunities for both men and women inside and outside the reserve.

During the project’s course, we have built the capacity of local women’s community based organizations to start productive initiatives involving women from marginalized backgrounds. Within this framework, we have supported the CBOs’ productive kitchen in diversifying their food production and food packaging methods, as well as helped to launch a sewing workshop, dry clean shop, and handicraft shop inside the wildlife sanctuary. Once the sanctuary will be opened, it will also feature a unique career path for local veterinary students and animal handlers to be employed inside the reserve.

Our project has shown that big impact starts from small initiatives. By providing local unemployed women with incentives to learn new skills – or develop their already existing skills into small businesses, we have created jobs, and through revolving funds and knowledge transfer paved the way for more sustainable socio-economic empowerment. This has further contributed to the prevention of rural area abandonment, and helped the local women’s CBOs to mobilize entire communities to initiate new income sources that will prove resilient in a long run.