Women Resource Center: Community Kitchen; assessing women empowerment

Abstract

In response to the current dramatically deteriorating situation in Lebanon, DPNA developed the project entitled “Women Resource Center: Community Kitchen” to promote the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian women and girls’ empowerment and self-reliance on livelihoods and food security levels to raise the standard of living in the Taamir area. The project empowered 20 women with soft and technical skills to conduct income-generating activities, and increase their well-being and psychosocial status. It is required from them to attend women's empowerment and food safety workshops, and participate in the social kitchen operations to ensure the access of 80 vulnerable households to nutritious food meals. The study aims to test the effectiveness of the project in the community through an evaluative survey distributed on the 66 households to understand how the process of women empowerment in the community kitchen is influencing their life. Additionally, individual interviews were done with five women to understand how the empowerment objective of the project is leading to a change in their lives. The results show that women empowerment projects have a positive impact on the individual and community levels, and the study discusses them thoroughly with recommendations for having similar future initiatives in other regions.