AT A GLANCE
While AVEC allowed women to develop leadership and initiative skills and to create collective income-generating activities (5 cooperatives were created as a result of AVEC project), The project “Socio-economic empowerment of rural women through integration into solidarity, social and environmental economy circuit” (so-called AVEC 2) aims to go further, by providing women beneficiaries with a training programme that enables them to consolidate their leadership skills and an ongoing support, both in identifying the needs of each cooperative, the implementation of an action plan, capacity building for cooperatives and women as well as in raising awareness among local actors.
OBJECTIVES
- Address the issues encountered by women in Morocco to initiate income-generating activities, especially in rural areas
- Promote equal opportunities for women and men to access and control natural resources regarding local products
- Support the 5 cooperatives already created to improve techniques for the valuation and marketing of products and capitalise on best practices to develop new income-generating activities
- Promote the preservation of local products and raise awareness among women in cooperatives of the overexploitation of natural local resources
Results
The principal outcomes of the project are:
- 5 cooperatives are autonomous and master the tools and mechanisms of good governance. These 5 cooperatives have access to public funding and in particular to the NHRI funds, a Moroccan national fund providing subsidies to cooperatives with a concrete project as well as a local impact
- Beneficiaries have developed their leadership and needs formulation capacities, and continue to play a stronger role in their homes and communities, including by participating in key decision-making processes and regularly attending community centres in the region
- Women inspire others to follow the example of the 5 cooperatives by creating new ones