Undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada , and in cooperation with the Ministry of National Economy, GROW is 4.5-year project (2018-2022) that aims to enhance economic empowerment and increase prosperity for low-income women and youth in the West Bank. The project responds to the development needs and challenges faced by female entrepreneurs in the West Bank, to move beyond their essential but largely unrecognized roles, ultimately contributing to their increased voice and agency in both social and economic spheres, while enhancing the overall productivity and competitiveness of the target value chains within the agribusiness subsector.

GROW will focus on three inter-related intermediate outcomes:

• Reduced barriers to entrepreneurship faced by women;
• Enhanced opportunities for women entrepreneurs to successfully establish and/or grow sustainable businesses; and
• Enhanced opportunities for female entrepreneurs, particularly female youth, to support the adoption of renewable energy in the olive, goat and sheep dairy and agri-food processing value chains.

To achieve these outcomes, the project will address several key challenges impacting women’s entrepreneurship in the West Bank, including the prevalence of socio-cultural barriers and their associated impacts on women’s household, community, and economic roles and status; and women’s limited access to finance, business development support services, technology, reliable and affordable energy, skills development opportunities, and markets.

GROW is designed to respond to Global Affairs Canada’s objectives and aims to be an innovative, evidence-driven project that places a priority on identifying activities and entry points in targeted value chains that respond to supporting women’s economic empowerment. Taking into consideration the constraints and barriers faced by women due to the market structure and those related to the social system and cultural norms, the project activities are two pronged:1) activities aiming to improve women’s access to opportunities, competitive advantage and position within value chains and sub-sectors, and consequently income; and 2) activities aiming to address social system’s constraints to improve women‘s agency (voice, choice, and decision making powers at the household and community levels).

To do that,GROW will maintain to the extent possible, a market systems lens and will build partnerships with market actors at community, district and national levels to ensure market actors behavior and adopt new practices that are more gender equitable and sustainable and simultaneously, equip women with needed skills and capacities to effectively engage in markets. GROW’s approach recognizes that poverty is multi-dimensional. Monetary and agency poverty shape the degree which to women can participate socially, politically and economically. Hence, an inclusive approach to targeting different profiles of poor women has been designed in close collaboration with GROW’s partners. Women will experience different paths to empowerment based on the social and economic dynamics in their households and communities. Some women may advance economically and increase their income as a result of improving their skills and productivity and access to needed services which will lead to an increase in their incomes. Other women may experience improved agency levels as a result of improved awareness of their rights, access to support networks, and/or enhanced familial and community support, while others may experience different levels of advancement in both the income and agency levels. This approach will generate varied and unique learning and knowledge-sharing opportunities. Working in traditional and non-traditional sub-sectors and value chains with different types of enterprises (women MSMEs in the agro-food processing, sheep and goat dairy, olive by-products value chains) and men-led enterprises in the case of Renewable Energy, to change their behavior to be gender equitable and inclusive of women in their recruitment and employment policies and practices, whilst targeting different profiles of women (above 30 years, married with children in the case of Agro-food VC, and female youth under 30 years in the case of Renewable Energy, provides an exceptional platform for a set of diverse activities that will have different dynamics, challenges, and opportunities.hellopeople.