Momani Zeinab
Organization: Sakhrah Women's Society Cooperative
Year Founded: 2002
Country: Jordan
Website: Not available
Geographic Area of Impact: Jordan.
Model: Social Business
Focus: Enterprise Development,Microfinance,Rural Development,Women.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Jordan, 2008 The Innovation The Sakrah Women’s Cooperative promotes the economic, social and cultural rights of women in the remote and rural areas of Jordan while operating as a successful for-profit cooperative. Its women members cultivate, manufacture, package and market the cooperative’s products and share in the profits, while their children are safely in the child care program or benefiting from school and university grants given by the group. The Sakhrah Women’s Cooperative has emerged from within the community, not from an outside donor, NGO or government initiative and is completely self sustainable from its own labors. It empowers women through offering them financial access to invest in their own activities that could be part of the cooperative, be it farming or crafts, or offering them new work opportunities that keep them engaged with the community. Background About 20 per cent of Jordanians live in rural areas where poverty is more prevalent than in urban areas. Approximately 19 per cent of the rural population is classified as poor. Because of the arid nature of the land, many rural poor people cannot grow enough crops to feed themselves and their families. Regular droughts exacerbate the situation. People who find other ways to supplement their incomes generally earn very little. Thus many of Jordan’s rural poor people live in extremely difficult conditions, with limited opportunities to diversify their farming enterprises, limited access to alternative sources of income and they lack collateral and cannot obtain loans needed for investment in farm activities. Sakhrah is just such a community in Jordan with a population of 18,000 people and with high rates of unemployment. In Sakrah the relative disempowerment of women meant they were duty-bound to care for their children at home as no child care centres existed in the community. Strategy Mrs Al Momani’s initial project in Sakrah was to establish the Zain kindergarten and nursery school that would enable working women a safe place to leave their children with supervision and stimulation while at work. This also provided other women who were obliged to otherwise mind their children at home the opportunity to engage in economically productive activities. The Sakhrah Womens Society Cooperative was subsequently founded to play an active role in the development of the community and the reduction of poverty and unemployment through the economic, social and cultural empowerment of women. It aims to raise the standard of living for the people of the area through the creation of different self-sustaining projects such as the dairy plant, sewing workshop and the grain processing and packaging project. The dairy products, grain and textiles are packaged, marketed and sold through various channels both in the community as well as beyond Sakrah. With their children in safe and good care, the Cooperative offers the women loans to start their own enterprises and activities. It also provides the necessary technical training to become project managers of various agricultural and dairy initiatives while also providing job opportunities for the people of area, such as teaching students through the nursery, kindergarten and the school. The cooperative now boasts 721 members involved in the cultivation and packaging of cereals, manufacture of dairy products, textiles and crafts. The cooperative has 32 full time staff involved in the management of micro-loans to members, training, packaging, marketing and sales of its members’ products. Each member contributes to the cooperative in the beginning of the year. The funds raised are invested into the various projects, and from the diversified sources of income, the profits of the cooperative are distributed equally between all its members at the end of the year. Profit itself is not the objective of the cooperative, but rather the sustained self-sufficiency of its members and their community. In addition the micro-credit project allocates small loans to women to help them start their own small personal projects such as renovating old houses, land reclamation and digging wells to collect water. Education loans for younger women of the community who have completed school and seek higher educational opportunities have also been provided The Entrepreneur Mrs Zeinab Al Momani was born in Irbid and received a Bachelor’s in elementary education. Mrs Al Momani wanted always self-reliant and completed her studies while sustaining her family. With her husband she moved to the Sakrah region and was driven to find solutions for the problems of working mothers caring for their children and to provide free education for orphans and people with special needs while reducing poverty and unemployment. She established the Zain Nursery and Kindergarten School as the first step in 2002, following which she founded the Sakhrah Women’s Society Cooperative by the end of 2003. After representing Jordan in the International Visitor Program in the United States, Mrs Al Momani founded a specific union for rural women farmers under the name Muzareat, the first of it’s kind in the Arab speaking world. She has participated in numerous conferences, workshops and exhibitions relating the stories of rural women and the cooperative, many of which have been covered by local media. In 2006, she won first place in the King Abdullah II award of self-employment and leadership.
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