Training Workshop in Marketing Skills: Opening Doors in Remote Villages

By Erin Mote - Manager of Resource Development , July 17, 2008 06:23 PM

Training Workshop in Marketing Skills: Opening Doors in Remote Villages
Through organizational assessments, strategizing, work plan development, and capacity building activities focusing on four Palestinian women’s organizations, the Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative (WEEI), funded by the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), aims to enhance the capacity of women economically and socially.

The program targets remote villages in which small communities of women are hungry for a chance to develop their management and production abilities in order to increase family incomes. Below are testimonies from three beneficiaries on the benefits of the program to their respective endeavors thus far:

Umm Bilal reports, “I live in a village with a population of 7,000 people, mostly women and children, [and] they put high hopes on our association - to date more than one hundred and fifty women have participated in our activities. With this growth, our main problem is that we don’t have any current projects which can absorb this broad interest. After my participation in this training, I can think of many projects that we had not thought about previously. With these new ideas, we will be able to support wider participation.”

Abla from the Battir Association said "I am one of [the] few women who were able to come here to Ramallah for the training because of social pressures faced by women in the village, but I am happy to be able to transfer information that I have received here to the women there and to start planning for our project which is a handcrafts project. We are also now looking for new ways of funding.”

Her fellow participant, Roqayh Meraay, said, "Our main problem is marketing our products to local and foreign markets. Through this workshop, we learned how to start projects and [to use] new marketing methods. We also learned how to differentiate our products from those of other societies. Sharing successes and lessons learned with the other four participating groups in the workshop was also of great benefit.”

Attachments:

• Fact Sheet for This Program
• PARCS Press Release (2).doc

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