Livelihoods Aim towards sustainability and how to allow people to cope with, and improve their welfare of future generations without degrading the environment or natural resources base.
Caritas Jordan has been implementing a livelihoods programme since 2015, aiming to empower vulnerable Iraqi refugees, as well as vulnerable Jordanian’s, it hopes to restore their dignity and develop their life and occupational skills.
Most of the Iraqis came to Jordan due to critical situation in their country and been displaced with fear in their hearts. A small number were resettled in a third country such as Australia, USA as they have family members to join and after applying an asylum certificate through UNHCR.
Among many challenges, Iraqi Christian refugees face in Jordan are the high cost of living without incomes, children’s absence from education for years at a time and psychological trauma are showing typical signs of distress the sense of belonging to their country is very strong and being forced to leave it was a terrible experience. All of them had a job in Iraq and lots of them are respectable professionals in different sectors
Caritas Jordan has established (6) Business Definition Area’s (BDAs) distributed in 3 governorates (Amman, Madaba and Karak), which includes 11 workshops implementing Up-cycling, outdoor furniture, agriculture field, food processing, soap making, sewing and material design, Mosaic, wood and metal accessories, Packaging and Labelling workshops and Clay workshop in Karak. At these BDAs Vulnerable Iraqi refugees and Vulnerable Jordanians are able to develop their occupational skills and receive an income through Cash for Work Modality in order to support their families, covering their basic needs and gaining a new skill to help them at their country of resettlement.
In the year 2016, the first BDAs were established in Amman, - Our Lady Of Peace Center with an aim to contribute to the empowerment of the most vulnerable refugee and local individuals within the Jordanian community, and on a later stage Caritas Jordan started to expand in establishing new BDAs in several places including workshops.
The Business Definition Area-BDA is a new concept of the Socio-Economic Empowerment, that can be implemented in public areas, parish premises, and municipality locations and considered as a development modality depends on a certain theme and how to develop the value-chain related business around it, through developing the Basic Life Skills, Occupational skills, and to equip the refugees and vulnerable Jordanians in the local communities with different management and business knowledge in order to start their work either:
1) at home as “Home-Based Activities”
2) other local charities/parishes as “Social enterprise”
3) inside the local and public premises as “Local Business” and Develop it as a new “Business Definition Area”.
These BDAs enabled them to:
• Iraqi refugees and vulnerable Jordanian aged 18-45 years, males/females will Promote their Livelihoods occupational skills
• Carry out the training tasks using tools and machines inside the BDAs, such as sewing embroidery machines, Carpentry, Clay and all necessary tools.
• Cash for Training modality -CFW: To secure all refugees and needy Jordanians participating in BDAs activities with necessary Income through Cash for Training/ Work opportunity helping to promote their resilience and generate an income
• Promote Production quality: Registration, Design and marketing of the products.
The outcomes of the activities are as follows:
1) Iraqi families are secured and lives with dignity covering their basic needs, and maintain their resilience.
2) The products of the BDAs will be presented in different marketing activities.
3) Caritas Jordan is in the process of marketing strategy to present the products in the local mat=rket and through different outlets and exhibitions in Jordan.
Each Mercy Garden has its own workflow and activities as follows:
• Mercy Garden of Amman - O.L.O.P.C: the Theme in this BDA is (OLIVE) as it contains 680 Olive trees, and the workshops were established according to what we can generate from Olive trees. Therefore, it is considered a continuation work that will focus on Upcycling, Soap Making, Sewing, and Agriculture activities
• Mercy Garden of Madaba: the main theme is Mosaic as Madaba is very famous in Mosaic works. Caritas Jordan started conducting trainings to the Iraqi refugees and vulnerable Jordanians on Mosaic designs, packaging and labeling, wood accessories (Frames) and a painting workshop.
In 2019, Caritas Jordan and in coordination with Ministry of Tourism and Jordan university represented by Dr. Haider Halaseh the archeologist and the writer of the book (Jordan; Historical Geography), came up with the idea of establishing a Big- Grounded Mosaic Tableau. The aim is to document the Christian sites in Jordan as mentioned in the Bible by visualizing all the identified-well known Christian sites in a big-ground mosaic plate using 1,7 Million local stones and achieved after 5000 working hours, the tableau was set in front of the Melkite Church in Madaba (built in 1931).
• Mercy Garden of Al- Karak: Caritas established 4 business definition areas (BDA) in Karak governorate, City of Karak, Rabbeh and Smakiyeh . they are as follows: -
1. Food processing operator in the Samakia area - north of Al-Karak governorate.
2. Handcraft and accessories made of copper and silver workshop in Al-Rabbeh.
3. The House of Sisters: Clay workshop in the City center, which is an old House of Sisters
Wheat House: located in the area of Al-Samakiya - Karak to produce (Freika, Burghul, Muftol).
Business Definition Areas:
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