Discovering local initiatives for social entrepreneurship: MoreThanAJob meeting in Jordan

Tuesday 17 January 2023

Supporting the development and creation of local initiatives for the social and economic development of the territory has been at the core of the MoreThanAJob project. Through a sub-grant scheme, local actors in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Greece and Italy had the opportunity to participate to this process and create new opportunities of growth in their territories.

Visiting the initiatives in Al-Karak, Jordan, gave us the opportunity to further explore their impact on the communities and how they fostered the employment opportunities of people participating to the activities.

Social Solidarity Economy Values and Principles: Education and Training Action and Financial Plans

Representatives of the Applied Scientific Research Fund – ASRAF, project coordinator, told us the results achieved as part of the project and the activities that allowed to raise awareness and knowledge on social economy among participants to their courses. They increased their capacities on how to realise initiatives and projects based on the principles of social economy and sustainable development.

Dairy and cheese production

We listened to the success stories and challenges encountered during the project implementation through the telling of representatives of Shihan Charity Association, project coordinator. We also had the opportunity to visit the Dairy Product Factory located in Al Qaser, in the north of Al-Karak, where the unemployed women and refugees got the practical training foreseen in the project.

Along with the trainers, four of the women participating in the training showed us the factory and presented the main process of producing the dairy product and how the training took place. They described the main skills and knowledge gained thanks to the training and how it helped them to achieve their goals.

This led also to the discovery of two success stories of women who started new businesses based on the dairy product.

The visits were part of the partner meeting held in Al-Karak, Jordan, on the 10^th and 11^th of January 2023.

About the project

MoreThanAJob – Reinforcing social and solidarity economy for the unemployed, uneducated and refugees is a project funded by the European Union under ENI CBC Mediterranean Sea Basin Programme. The project aims at enhancing the development of cooperation mechanisms between the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) actors and the public administration to improve the social services for vulnerable groups in order to increase their opportunities of social and labour inclusion.