Women's Empowerment in Africa

In September 2020, the project of bolstering women’s development in rural Morocco was initiated. Since then, the project has shown great progress and results. It has been implemented within the AEIF 2020, which is coordinated by the US Embassy in Morocco.

This project aimed to provide two groups of rural women with new skills and tools in order to achieve self-empowerment and greater participation in their communities, whether that be politically, economically, or in the civic spaces of their individual community. Twenty participants in total had the opportunity to participate in language literacy, technical capacity-building, and empowering programs during this twelve-month period. After all this preparation, the goal was for each group to start their own cooperative in order to make a profit, support, and inspire others—especially within their rural communities.

From March throughout June, the women’s groups were busy with several workshops on topics such as catering an event, keeping track of documents and receipts, improving product quality, preserving natural resources, and last, but not least, exchanging ideas with other women in other cooperatives. Simultaneously, the US delegation of the Embassy visited and met with the newly-empowered women. Both parties were exceptionally pleased to become acquainted and learn about the progress these women have made in the past few months.

Furthermore, boosting their confidence and sense of self-empowerment were two goals of these field trips for each of the women’s groups. Some of them were leaving their village for the first time in their lives. One group focused on perfecting their artisanal carpet production and embroidery skills while paying a visit to the Achbarou Women’s group, whose focus of production is on handcrafted carpets. The other got the chance to visit Amal Women’s Training Center, where they learned about a catering and restoration business.

The AEIF project has a big beneficial impact on the lives of the women and their communities. They no longer have to count on their husbands for financial stability; instead they have started generating their own income and can support the well-being of their families. Additionally, married women get more recognition from their now more open-minded partners. Moreover, the women are now able to read, write, and for the first time can help their children with homework, as well as encourage them to finish school.

A beautiful example that implements the great influence of this project is the youngest woman of the Sidi Ali Ofare village, who was forced to drop out of middle-school seven years ago and left her dreams of becoming a lawyer behind. Fortunately, only two months after the beginning of the women’s empowerment project, she chose to go back to school with the goal of passing the baccalaureate and pursuing her dreams of becoming an advocate.

In conclusion, these 20 amazing, rural women are prepared for a sustainable future within their community. This incredible example also motivated other women to join the new cooperatives and has inspired neighbouring villages to establish their own.

Team members of the High Atlas Foundation managing the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program met two host organizations (HOs) in Laayoune Charkia municipality in the Oriental region and discussed with them how to collect data and fill out the baseline and Organizational Development Index (ODI) forms.

The women's cooperatives are "Laayoun Li Tanmyat El Aachab Tebiya" and “Arnan.” Both of the HOs are extracting rosemary oil and have similar needs.

The F2F Program conducted a women's empowerment training workshop for these cooperative members and will follow up with an assignment in order to deliver training on rosemary cosmetics manufacturing and its oil extraction techniques.

The meeting with cooperative members resulted in a clear vision of their priorities:

Laayoun Li Tanmiyat El Aachab Tebiya:

The cooperative was created in April 2019, in Sidi Malouk, Laayoune municipality, Taourirt province in the Oujda region. The cooperative has already benefited from the MEPI program with the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) in 2019, and training workshops on E-marketing from the F2F program in March 2021. They asked for more training sessions on rosemary oil extraction so that they can reach regional and international prospective customers.

Arnan Cooperative:

Arnan cooperative is an agricultural cooperative founded in 2017 by 5 members (all women) and it is based in Laayoune Charkia municipality in the Oriental region.They are producing cosmetic products using natural rosemary. The cooperative’s vision for the future is not limited to marketing their products. They want to improve the quality and quantity of their rosemary cosmetics—such as shampoo, soap, and skin ointments—on site instead of selling their raw materials to cosmetics laboratories in big cities. To do this, they need to be prepared to meet health and safety criteria, and the women who work at the cooperative will need training courses in the preparation of cosmetics—how to manufacture them properly and how to work with specialized equipment.

The HAF team, through the F2F Program, completed the IMAGINE workshop for female members of four agricultural cooperatives from October 29 through November 1 in Berkane province (Oriental region). Ideally, empowerment through this workshop is a continuous, holistic process with cognitive, psychological, social, and economic dimensions. These activities are designed to achieve local development by building women’s capacities to improve the economic future and the quality of life for inhabitants of the province.

This training course was shaped around a vision of bringing a wide variety of women together to learn from each other and to look critically at their work in the cooperative for building a stronger movement. The participants included youth and adult women with a wide range of educational backgrounds. As the course progressed, it became clear that exploring differences was one focus. We sought throughout the workshop to create an environment of support and challenge for all participants.

The women developed a set of strategies on research/documentation, networking, influencing, training, and media in their cooperatives. However, many of the women who participated also spoke about how important the challenge of acquiring life skills and searching for meaning in their lives is to them; they want something in their minds "besides the everyday." Where a workshop creates space for the discussion of issues and for questioning the meaning of "a happy life," this can lead to exploring the problematic connection between life issues and "getting ahead." In this way, the nature of challenges in life can be broadened and the possibilities of social change strengthened.