Expanding Rural Livelihoods Opens Doors for Women

Amal Al-Masae’id, 27, landed her first job as the secretary of a cooperative in Northern Badia, an area of northeast Jordan close to the Syrian border.

Finding a job is extremely difficult for women in the rural areas of Jordan, where more than one in four people are unemployed. Two years ago, Amal Al-Masae’id, 27, the oldest of six children, landed her first job as secretary of a cooperative in Northern Badia, an area of northeast Jordan close to the Syrian border. Mercy Corps supports its local partner, the Jordan River Foundation, in helping these cooperatives revitalize rural life thanks to funding from the country’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation.

The roughly 100 members of the Anakeed Al-Kheir Cooperative care for 130 sheep and 25 goats, weave Bedouin tents known as Beit Sha’ar, cultivate vegetables in greenhouses, sun-dry tomatoes and produce organic honey. In her role as secretary, Amal maintains all project documentation, records minutes of cooperative meetings, maintains membership lists, files, arranges meetings, prepares monthly reports and follows up on administrative issues inside and outside the project.

The salary she earns from her work augmented her family's finances and enabled Amal to complete a bachelor’s degree in geography through a distance-learning program offered by a Sudanese university.

“I have learned and changed so much through this work,” Amal says. “The model of female leadership provided by H.E. Ms. Suhair Al-Ali (Minister of Planning and International Cooperation), Ms. Maha Khatib (JRF Director General), Ms. Marta Colburn (Mercy Corps Country Director) and other women working in the project has been an inspiration and a model for my own professional goals.”