Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

Women and youth in Gaza supported by the project are economically and socially empowered to develop their agency and enter the job market as skilled workers or to successfully establish, or grow sustainable businesses in traditional and non-traditional sectors

Expected results

Output 1: Profitability and sustainability of cooperative-run businesses enhanced through tailored capacity and organizational development support to women's cooperatives.

Output 2: Female/male youth and women, including women living with disabilities, supported to enhance their employability and establish their own start-ups through market-oriented training and entrepreneurship development services and agency building sessions.

Output 3: A safer more protective environment is fostered for economically-active women survivors of gender-based violence or at-risk women, including female/youth.

Output 4: Strategic evidence-based advocacy conducted to challenge barriers to female and youth entrepreneurship, promote a more inclusive enabling environment, and to end the blockade of Gaza

Target group / Beneficiaries

The project intends to directly reach 1,760 persons in Gaza - 41% women, 18% female youth, 24% men, 17% male youth, and 75 Community-based organizations (CBO) staff.

Activities

• Identify and select three cooperatives under the umbrella of Cooperative Society for Saving and Lending (CSSL) and develop business support plans with the three cooperatives

• Support the coops to implement their business plans, including provision of inputs, equipment as identified in the plans, in addition to tailored business/technical support and provide coaching and mentoring services.

• Deliver agency building sessions for 100 women, cooperative members.

• The development of Technical Training Center (TTC) will provide technical and financial training, market-oriented employability capabilities and start-up/business development packages with a focus on women and youth

• Survivors and/or at risk of gender-based violence (GBV) will participate in business development activities by Small Enterprise Center Association and will receive business packages to start, expand or sustain their businesses

• To foster a safer more protective environment family members of women and female youth and community leaders and decision-makers will be engaged in community awareness sessions on prevention on all forms of GBV

• Community-based organizations (CBO) staff members will receive GBV training

• Establish Women’s Leadership Committees

• Development and Implementation of advocacy frameworks/strategies on enabling environment for entrepreneurship– meetings and events organized with different stakeholders.

• Prepare policy briefs and human-interest stories based on program evidence

• 8 Media/Lobbying actions such as advocacy tour for relevant project staff from Gaza to Austria or Brussels and/or journalists’ visits to project locations.

Context

The design of this project is anchored in the Palestinian national development agenda as reflected in the government’s National Policy Agenda 2017-2022, its sectoral plans, and its international commitments, such as its 2014 ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Following the fiscal crisis in 2019, the Palestinian economy was projected to recover in 2020. The World Bank’s pre-COVID-19 projection included a 2.5% growth. Now, due to the impact of COVID-19, a full decline of at least 7.6% has been anticipated based on a gradual return to the normal economic activity.

Through this project, the targeted women as well as female and male youth in Gaza will be economically and socially empowered to enter the job market as skilled workers, or to successfully establish or grow sustainable business in traditional and non-traditional sectors in the formal economy. The project builds on CARE’s experience in economic empowerment, more recently through its “Women and Youth Entrepreneurs Leading Change, West Bank and Gaza (OBADER)” project currently under implementation in West Bank and Gaza, which is designed to strengthen an enabling entrepreneurship ecosystem through the reduction of gender-specific barriers, enhanced agency and business opportunities for women and youth entrepreneurs. Under this project, CARE will, provide technical support to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and entrepreneurs and will promote the transition from informal to formal economy. The project will also work at the agency/individual level to enhance the capability, knowledge, self-esteem and decision-making skills of women and youth.