A research study reveals the prescribed community impingement of sustainable agricultural initiatives when preceded by woman ’s authorisation workshops , leading to participatory action , enhanced community well - being , and decentralization . Since 2016 , the High Atlas Foundation has implemented self - find shop that boost and equip women to recognize their intrinsical economic value , identify their goals , and strategically consider their plans for the future . The " Imagine " program takes place over four day and provides a space for pursue personal and collective empowerment . Imagine utilizes a rights - based approach that integrates Morocco ’s Family Code – Moudawana – and facilitates women ’s exploration of their legal protections . conjunctive - building bodily process also enable adult female to increase their fiscal independence and entree to equitable development .
The High Atlas Foundation recently conducted a comparative impact psychoanalysis with two group of woman in the Toubkal rural municipality of the Taroudant province following two clime actions . In 2017 , HAF host an Imagine empowerment and development experience with woman in the Aguerzrane village . During the experience , the participants examined social relationships in their lives that influence their ability to advance their goals . Throughout the workshop , player further considered their outlook on work and money , emotion and organic structure , sex , and spiritualty ( in a Maroc - Moslem setting ) , and their visual sensation for the future . After the participatory planning experience , the Aguerzrane women decided to work up an constitutional fruit tree and medicinal herb nursery . This method of polish , the char realized , would generate income through plant sales in their region as well as bestow to the existing household needs of the residential district . The nursery was build in 2018 on fresh fabricate agrarian patio built on formerly eroding mountainsides , and the nursery has been productively operating ever since . The provision of regular technical breeding has been provided by extremely certified volunteers through the USAID Farmer - to - Farmer Program . The second Greenwich Village , Missour , is one kilometer north of Aguerzrane . In 2018 , HAF find a request from their granger for cherry , walnut , and almond tree , and HAF met the request . The Imagine shop and participatory methods were not facilitate in this residential district , but the Farmer received , imbed , and assert the trees based on the amount and miscellany they prefer . HAF then serve a graduate thesis subject area that examined the societal and economical upshot on both villages : Aguerzane , which take part in the women ’s authorisation shop prior to receiving semen and cloth , and Missour , where trees were cater without inclusive , participatory planning . The researcher , Nora Martetschläger , spent three month subsist with the residential district , engaging in individual and communal data - gather procedures to analyze multidimensional poorness . In her published sum-up of the analysis , Nora found that " although the other village [ Aguerzane ] , where fewer tree were establish , performed worse overall on most impoverishment indicators , women ’s participation in education and employment was high because of more individual and collective cognisance and legal action in those area . “In Missour , however , there was a paltry income benefit for the women despite describe increases in household earnings and food security . There was no increase in girls ' participation in education or woman ’s literacy . However , two families travel to the city – belike partially enabled by the new income – where there are more chance for girls ' participation in education . This discipline illuminates a significant challenge in the connection between women ’s empowerment and scalable clime action for inclusive systemic change and national resiliency . HAF ’s women ’s empowerment workshop have leaven to be an good strategy for improving ill-tempered - sectoral sustainable ontogeny . However , the need for such strategy is throttle by organisational capacity . Upon critique Nora ’s study , HAF look at remedial military action in Missour by facilitating Imagine workshop . monetary resource from the Darden School of the University of Virginia will be used to establish farming terraces on an eroding mountainside , the Missour community indicate for the women ’s chemical group . However , the throttle issue of capacity remains : HAF has 15 empowerment trainer and anticipates planting a minimum of 1.7 million trees with 10,000 farming kin in 160 municipalities this year . These objectives are indicative of a unsubtle structural challenge to the effectuation of strategical , community - contrive solutions . HAF miss the cash in hand and personnel to implement and monitor mood - smart husbandry to ensure that women and girlfriend are the unmediated beneficiaries , despite give a strategy to achieve national scale . This study also let on the possible challenges to implementing decentralization without first solidify participatory experiences at the local level . The enhanced subnational power afforded by decentralisation will intrench existing class and grammatical gender based stratifications in subnational jurisdictions . Climate - smart agricultural task could have the same impression of affirming unjust baron and resource distribution if such undertaking are not founded on participatory experience . Women ’s and girls ' participation and direction in all phases of maturation must be front and center in decree for clime action at law to positively impact their lives , folk , community , and country .
Dr. Yossef Ben - Meir is President of the High Atlas Foundation and a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia .
