Karak: In Al Qatrana District, east of Karak Governorate, where poverty and unemployment are intensifying and job opportunities are shrinking for many families, women are turning to home gardening and small rural projects as a way to secure income and improve living conditions.
اضافة اعلان
Rural development projects run by the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture have supported these initiatives by providing training, agricultural guidance and technical assistance. This helps families make use of their available resources, strengthens women's participation in economic activity, and opens the door to productive projects suited to the area's semi-desert environment.
Despite the semi-desert nature of the area, women's interest in Al Qatrana, along with the support projects offered by the Directorate of Agriculture for establishing small family and home agricultural projects, has helped spread home gardening. It has provided an important share of families' needs, as well as additional income from selling surplus home-grown produce of all kinds.
Al Qatrana District in Karak Governorate, including its towns such as Al Abyad and Sad Al Sultani, is among the main pockets of poverty in Jordan, facing continuing economic and social challenges related to high rates of poverty and unemployment.
Various statistics indicate that the poverty rate in the district, home to around 20,000 people spread across the Qatrana desert and neighboring towns along the desert road, ranges between 23% and 33%, placing it among the highest-ranking poverty pockets in the Kingdom. Unemployment among young people able to work exceeds 37%.
Achieving economic sustainability
Under these difficult conditions, home and rural farming projects stand out as a means of helping hundreds of families in the area face livelihood challenges. Rural development projects have flourished in recent years as a cornerstone of economic sustainability and of empowering families and women at the local level.
Among these projects, the plastic greenhouse and plant production project, supervised by the Al Qatrana District Directorate of Agriculture in cooperation with the rural development and women's empowerment department, has attracted wide participation from women in the district's towns. These projects include growing vegetables such as broad beans, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, broccoli and other leafy vegetables, as well as medicinal and aromatic plants such as thyme, sage and chamomile.
The projects also include individual and group initiatives carried out by women and associations, largely linked to home gardening, and covering food processing, dairy and cheese making, extraction of plant essential oils, and handicrafts. These provide genuine income sources for families and contribute to their sustainability.
Women in Al Qatrana District affirm that rural development projects, especially agricultural ones, provide work and economic sustainability for dozens of families, offering job opportunities that fit the requirements of environmental sustainability. They say these projects have helped families and women secure income of real value.
Um Atiyeh, 56, who lives with her family in the town of Al Qatrana, east of Karak Governorate, was able, together with other women, to establish a small home farming project to provide income for families in the area.
She said her family's situation and her life changed considerably after she took part in the rural development projects, which provided a stable source of income after a period of hardship, especially once she became the family's breadwinner. She affirmed that small home farming projects, such as growing broad beans and aromatic plants and producing essential oils, have provided steady income, thanks to ongoing follow-up and agricultural supervision from the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture.
Um Atiyeh explained that the success of her home project made it a model for other women in the town, encouraging them to establish their own projects inside their homes to provide income for their families, after receiving financial, technical and training support from the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture's teams.
An important and lasting source of income
Um Eman, for her part, said she is a university graduate who is unemployed and had found no hope of getting a job. This led her to look for a private work opportunity, which she found in running a small home farming project based on seasonal farming, where each season is dedicated to growing a particular product.
She added that this is done under arrangements with the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture, which provided her with the information and resources needed for home farming, together with other women, particularly in protected cultivation inside plastic greenhouses, to grow different varieties according to the season.
She explained that through these crops she has been able to secure an important and lasting source of income for her family, after constantly searching for various forms of assistance because of the unemployment her family was suffering from.
Um Eman affirmed that the training courses the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture runs for women who benefit from rural development projects, aimed at increasing income and providing sustainable economic sources for families, help raise their qualifications. She believes these programs, through specialized training and awareness workshops, seek to strengthen women's skills and integrate them into the labor market effectively, particularly in home farming, which requires continuous technical follow-up and agricultural supervision.
According to the director of agriculture for the Al Qatrana District, engineer Hukmat Al Tarawneh, the various rural development projects, including the home farming projects implemented by the directorate, form a successful foundation for local initiatives that focus on qualifying and empowering women, alongside other sectors of the local community.
He pointed to the continued support and guidance for these projects, given their positive impact on raising incomes and strengthening sustainable development in the area.
Al Tarawneh noted that the directorate has implemented many qualification courses for participants in the various projects, given their importance in strengthening beneficiaries' abilities and enabling them to manage their projects efficiently, which positively affects rural agricultural development, improves production levels, and suits the local environment.
The projects supervisor at the Al Qatrana Directorate of Agriculture, engineer Alaa Bani Atiyeh, said the projects implemented under rural development programs are a genuine contributor to developing women and the local community in Al Qatrana District, both economically and environmentally, especially those that suit the local environment.
She added that agriculture has a suitable foundation in the area and is one of the pillars of citizens' economic activity, alongside livestock rearing, which are the main economic activities in Al Qatrana District.
She pointed out that these projects included growing crops inside plastic greenhouses, including broad beans, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce and broccoli, as well as medicinal and aromatic plants such as sage, thyme and chamomile. She stressed that this achievement is the fruit of sound planning and continuous work, contributing to supporting and developing the agricultural sector in Al Qatrana District and strengthening rural development projects and empowering local communities.
Bani Atiyeh explained that the directorate runs many qualification and training courses for women initiators, covering the management of plastic greenhouses and how to cultivate them correctly, as well as introducing suitable planting schedules and the most important practices that improve production and ensure the sustainability of agricultural projects.
Source: Al-Ghad. Reporting by: Hashal Al Odaylat.
