JRF, ILO partner for women economic empowerment

AMMAN — Some 60 Syrian refugee and host community women are on track to become employed as home-based artisans for a multinational furniture brand through a joint training programme recently launched by the Jordan River Foundation (JRF) and the International Labour Organisation  (ILO). 

ILO’s Regional Resilience and Crisis Response Specialist Maha Kattaa said that supporting underprivileged
female-headed households is a “crucial element” of the new initiative, noting that the UN agency often finds that women are unable to take on jobs due to their family commitments. 

Najma, a Syrian refugee who has been in Jordan with her family for over four years, told The Jordan Times that although she wants to work and support her family, her family duties do not enable her to take on a job that requires her to leave home for long hours. 

“I am a housewife and this profession is suitable for me as I can work from home. At first, I was worried, but at the same time, I was excited to have this opportunity — I want to work and make some money,” she said about the new project.

The “weak” role of women in the Jordanian labour market was deemed as “one of the main problems faced by the country” by the Jordan Labour Watch and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in a paper issued on the occasion of International Women's Day, which warned that “the lack of women in the labour market places additional pressure on the national economy by depriving it of the untapped potential of female workers, especially considering that the female education rate in Jordan is higher than that of males”.

“The efforts made to increase the integration of Jordanian women into the economic life are still limited,” the paper continued, adding that “the programmes created during the last period only contributed to the development of a solidarity discourse supportive of women and their various issues, instead of leading to their economic participation in a tangible and effective manner”.

The joint training programme by the ILO and JRF seeks to fill the gap by applying a “new, on-the-job training model that takes into consideration the family responsibilities of these women”, Kattaa noted, expressing hopes for the initiative to encourage more women to take on work opportunities.

JRF Director General Enaam Barrishi told The Jordan Times that the organisation´s cooperation with the ILO is “based on a collaborative model that seeks to offer women access to sustainable livelihoods through handicrafts training”, stressing that “building social enterprises under such partnerships is key to JRF’s vision to impact thousands of community women and their families”. 

Running through March 2019, the project is currently providing 70 vulnerable women with skill sets that will enable them to work in the handicrafts and artisan fields, in addition to enhancing social cohesion by supporting women from both refugee and host communities.

Upon reaching the final stage of the initiative, some 60 beneficiaries who successfully complete the training programme will be employed as home-based artisans for JRF’s handicrafts collection with IKEA, according to ILO sources. 

“The programme aims to support women to become more aware of their role in the household and help them become decision makers within their families,” JRF sources said, explaining that “at the economic level, women will play an essential part in improving their living standards and that of their families through their employability”. 

The foundation’s representatives stressed that the impact of the initiative will go beyond the women’s employment as “the project will impact thousands of community women and their families — both socially and economically”.