Rural Development

In compliance with one of Amel's key objectives which is to ensure access of target populations to means that will improve their living conditions and their social and economic status, the Rural Development Project was initiated in April 2004 in partnership with the Italian NGO Africa' 70 and supported by the European Commission.

This project's overall objective was to create income generating opportunities to women and farmers from South Lebanon. More specifically, the Rural Development Project targeted 320 rural women (from the village of Ebl el Saqi ) providing them trainings in soap making, the production of medicinal herbs and essential oils. Training sessions were focused on:

• Food processing
• Medicinal herbs and aromatic plants processing
• Soap making
• Packaging
• Marketing
• Introduction to the Lebanese law on cooperatives
• Administration and Financial Management

In addition, 100 farmers searching for new adapted crops to diversify their production benefited from trainings aiming to strengthen their technical capacities.

The second phase of this initiative includes the creation of a cooperative that will enable the beneficiary women to start selling their products. However, the main challenge met by most cooperatives such as Ebl el Saqi's being the marketing of their products, a joint initiative Amel/Africa'70 aiming at the support of Ebl el Saqi Cooperative as well as other cooperatives throughout Lebanon is currently under study. This project has for main objective to establish a Point of Sale in Beirut in order to facilitate the commercialization of goods produced by Lebanese cooperatives.