Project profile — Supporting Women Cooperatives and Associations in the Agro-Food Sector

This project aims to improve the livelihoods of rural Lebanese and Syrian refugee women and contributes to their empowerment through training in business management, communication skills and legal issues related to women’s rights. This project supports women-led cooperatives and associations to establish sustainable income-generating enterprises. It supports an enabling environment for women by reinforcing the capacity of relevant institutions and organisations to provide more equitable services. It also provides training to Ministry of Agriculture staff in mainstreaming gender equality in the development of policies and strategies in the agricultural sector. It empowers women in achieving equal participation in Lebanon’s economy, and improves their access to and control over resources. Project activities include: (1) increasing awareness of the rights and roles of women at the family and community levels, and this among all levels of society in targeted rural areas; (2) increasing the capacity of the General Directorate of Cooperatives (GDC) to improve their management information system for the registration and monitoring of cooperatives, including a data tracking system based on sex disaggregated data; (3) increasing the awareness of the need for more gender-responsive services from government institutions and non-governmental organizations at national and local levels; (4) increasing the knowledge in the development of business plans and technical aspects of small-scale agri-food enterprise development for targeted rural women cooperatives/associations; and (5) increasing the capacity of women cooperatives/associations to improve productivity in local agro-food business ventures. .

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved enabling social and cultural environment for rural women’s economic empowerment is created; and (2) increased participation of women cooperatives/associations in local economies to establish and/or expand sustainable agri-food income-generating enterprises.

Results achieved at the end of the project (March 2024) include: (1) trained 46 staff members (31 women and 15 men) at Lebanon’s Ministry of Agriculture to mainstream gender in developing government strategies and policies; (2) supported over 2,000 individuals representing 581 families (298 Syrian) in rural areas to benefit from awareness campaigns on women’s roles and rights, with approximately 30% demonstrating a more positive perception of women’s decision-making role; (3) installed and deployed a management information system with sex-disaggregated data from cooperatives at the general directorate of cooperatives, and trained 10 staff members on its use (7 women and 3 men); (4) supported 261 women-led groups and cooperatives to gained the technical knowledge required to start or expand their agri-food business by participating in cooperative business school; (5) established, expanded, or maintained 143 small-scale agri-food enterprises, with 135 meeting business sustainability criteria; (6) participating enterprises reported a 177% increase in their combined business volume and a 191% increase in their combined revenue; (7) hired 1,622 daily workers (1,169 women and 453 men) of 660 Lebanese and 962 Syrian nationals through participating cooperatives, representing over 47,000 workdays; and (8) supported 2,778 Lebanese and Syrian citizens (2,209 women and 569 men) to directly benefit from additional income and employment generated by the project’s participating cooperatives and associations.