Photo: Members of the women’s Cooperative Takhrkhourt during a workshop on sustainable agricultural practices.
© High Atlas Foundation
This article is reposted courtesy of Panorama Solutions. Read the full solution here.
Fourteen women from the Tassa Ouirgane village attended a four-day Imagine Empowerment workshop January 2019 with the High Atlas Foundation (HAF). The purpose of Imagine workshops is to enable women to create the life they most want. It is considered one of the foremost personal growth trainings available. The program focuses on seven areas of life: Emotions, Relationships, Body, Money, Work, Spirituality, and Sexuality.
Below are the testimonials of a girl and a woman, both of whom attended the workshop:
”I’m divorced, and I have a daughter. I live with my father and my mother. I want to work to help my daughter, and I’m afraid to get out of the house because of society’s contempt toward me and their lack of trust. I thank God because my family has helped me a lot, but I wish I could be independent.”
After 4 days of the empowerment training, she confirmed “I will not pay attention to the opinion of others. I will be working toward my vision to be independent, build my own home, and live with my daughter.”
This woman is now the leader of the Takhrkhourt agricultural Cooperative.
“I dropped out of middle school during the last school break. I started training in artisanal craft, but I don’t feel comfortable with the decision that I made, and I don’t know how I can tell my father.”
On the second day of the workshop, she told the other women participants: “I informed my father about how I felt, and he agrees with my decision to return to school.”
One of the results that came from the empowerment workshop and the participatory approach meetings that were conducted afterward with the same women was the vision to create an agricultural cooperative in order to capitalize upon the village’s natural resources. HAF provided them with training on the creation and role of cooperative statutes, democratic voting for decision-making in the cooperative, organizational management, environmental protection, how to plant seeds and cuttings of trees, and how to irrigate trees.
Throughout each training and workshop that the women received in 2019-2020, HAF supported them to create Cooperative Takhrkhourt, an agricultural cooperative whose membership includes one woman and four girls. In 2020 alone, Cooperative Takhrkhourt planted 40,000 olive and walnut trees in a nursery that they manage.