Women's Program Center / Al Wehdat Camp

 

The "Women's Economic Empowerment" program was established in the early 1950s, when UNRWA in Jordan provided training to Palestinian women in the camp on "the art of tailoring and tailoring." It lasted for nine months on a full-time basis, as UNRWA provided the trainees with qualified teachers/sewing machines, machines, fabrics, and all The necessary means for the success of the training, and at the end the trainee is given a certificate issued by UNRWA and signed by the Director General of UNRWA operations in Jordan.It allowed a large number of women to work and improve the level of income for their families, including those who obtained a work contract in the Gulf countries, which contributed to supporting families inside Camps provide an opportunity to improve a decent standard of living.

At the beginning of the eighties, UNRWA began with a decision to expand the services provided to empower and train women, and it started using the food restaurant after the service of providing food to refugees stopped in the name of women’s program centers to achieve a number of goals. The trainers receive simple wages from the percentage of the fee that is paid by the students wishing to learn any profession or craft, the most important of which are:

Expansion of craft and vocational programs to train women, including the art of beauty and hair cutting, handicrafts such as (embroidery, flower making, wool and crochet, in addition to knitting, with six-month courses, with the main sewing center continuing to operate until the year 2000).

•  Finding a safe space in which the women of the camp gather is an outlet for them to release negative energies and receive and provide support at the same time; Which qualifies women to continue facing life's difficulties and finding possible solutions for them.

• Contribute to improving women's income through training.

• In 1992, UNRWA, with the support of the German Embassy, opened the "Assistance" service legal counselors for women in the camp”, where a number of female legal advisors were contracted to provide legal advice to women who frequent the center for the purpose of education or visitation. A series of lectures and trainings were held to educate them about their basic and human rights in the law. Funding continued from the various supporting agencies until 1996.

• In the mid-nineties, UNRWA in Jordan considered the need to involve women:

• The local community in the management of the women's programs center and formed a women's committee consisting of seven members who were chosen from among the hundred women who applied to work voluntarily in the management of programs and activities in the center to develop it. Work has been done to train them on all the necessary expertise from the human, financial and other departments to qualify the women "members of the Women's Committee" to manage the center and their management will be free of charge without financial returns

• At the beginning of the year (2000), the agency employee was withdrawn from the management of the center, and the center became managed by

• Completely by the women's administrative committee under the financial and technical supervision of the agency. With the expansion of programs and activities offered to women, training services are provided to all Palestinian, Jordanian and expatriate women without discrimination.

• The concept of managing the Women's Program Center is based on understanding the economic, vital and invisible roles that women play in an effort to highlight their economic contribution, the need to enhance and highlight their various forms of work, and to communicate women's voices and enhance their leadership and community role. The program also seeks in general to expand the circle of options available to women, to enhance their economic, social and political opportunities, to make their voices heard, and to help them obtain their rights.

 

The Message:

The Women's Program Center works in cooperation with the UNRWA to improve the livelihood of women in the local community through:

•  Empowering women by promoting education, health, social services and economic development.

•  Building local and international partnerships to make a sustainable impact.

• Benefit from the expertise, capabilities and skills of partner institutions and individuals. to achieve the desired results.

• Providing services based on leading global standards and innovative solutions.

•  Dissemination and circulation of ideas

Values:

Cooperation: Teamwork to support general principles and vision to achieve common goals

Flexibility: Rapid response to changing and moving needs and the challenges arising from these changes

Transparency:-

• Building productive and leadership skills for women

• Facilitate the active participation of women to claim their economic rights and involve them in policy development

• Facilitate sustainable access for women to the labor market

• Production and dissemination of knowledge and mutual learning

• Building trust and assurance in all activities and programmes

Excellence: Responsibility for achieving development goals and adherence to the highest standards of performance.

Innovation: - By adopting innovative and advanced solutions

Sustainability: - Providing development that meets current and future needs

 

The vision:

 

The Main objectives

The main objectives of the program can be summarized as follows:

Strategies, programs and activities:-

The program pursues four interrelated strategies, one of which reinforces the other:

• Capacity building and training to bring about social change

• Entering the markets.

• Support, assistance and knowledge exchange.

• Participation in studies and knowledge

A- Capacity building and training :

It is based on training groups of women on leadership, communication, information technology, management and accounting, adherence to legal procedures related to their projects and initiatives, in addition to improving the quality of production, increasing its quantities and controlling its quality.
It also includes individual and continuous follow-up of women, in addition to enhancing their participation in Movements that seek to eliminate discrimination based on gender, and to stand in solidarity with them and support them to address forms of discrimination individually or collectively. The priorities and needs of women through meeting them as groups at their work sites, and this type of support is specifically designed to meet these needs.
 

B- Entering the Markets:

Providing training opportunities on various crafts and occupations that enable women to work through small projects with available and simple resources, and then work on marketing products through charitable bazaars and participating in mobile sales markets, in addition to providing an opportunity to market products by displaying them in the center and making them available to the public, by On the one hand, and on the other hand, securing contact with the owners of factories and companies and trying to link women with sources of work in the public market.

 

C- Support, assistance and knowledge exchange :

This axis is reflected in building support groups from women themselves, exchanging experiences and knowledge through lived reality, and working on building capacities in facing challenges and transforming threats into opportunities that can be invested in improving available livelihoods.  

 

D- Participation in studies and knowledge:

Participate in questionnaires and analyze their results that measure the development of work results in improving the work environment, training, and mutual understanding of the roles of women and men in developing and improving life in a decent manner. Work to implement programs and trainings to reduce the gender gap in order to recognize women's actual role in the family economy.

 

The developmental goal of the women's centers programs is:

• Work to promote economic empowerment by identifying decent work deficiencies to highlight the need for humanitarian assistance in order to contribute to improving the lives of refugee women entrepreneurs in Al Wihdat camp and the surrounding areas.

• Work to devote the concept of protecting low-income women from risks by creating sustainable sources of income, with the help of business groups formed in order to withstand the market, pool resources and express their interests with a unified voice.

• Work to enhance support and assistance for economic activities struggling to survive in growth to become economically viable projects with better opportunities to secure livelihoods.

• Working on improving the abilities of female entrepreneurs to work in a team.

• Encouraging the beneficiaries of the Center’s programs and activities to have better access to resources and markets, with a focus on supporting their unified voice and increasing their representation.

• Work to enhance knowledge and legal awareness

 

Statistics

Administrative Report

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