The Farmer to Farmer (F2F) team members visited Konouz Lakdirat cooperative in Lakdirat’s village in the Jnane Bouih municipality of Al Youssoufia province (Marrakech-Safi region) to collect data and complete the baseline and ODI forms.

The cooperative, established this year by 25 women, benefited from an IMAGINE workshop last June filled with reflection, discussion, and exercises that allowed them to open up on topics that may have been previously uncharted. Providing a structure for discussion went a long way in creating bonds between the women, who had not previously interacted with one another but who have experienced both success and failure and found comfort in common exercises that ultimately helped them create their cooperative.

Their main activities are growing and planting fruit trees with the farming families in the province, and since the community is known for its olive trees, the cooperative is working to plant olives, with almost 3,000 olive trees provided to them by the High Atlas Foundation.

Konouz Lakdirate co-op is the first one in the community that will run a fruit tree nursery using an irrigation system. The members are also seeking to use a greenhouse in order to have more and better tree production and to expand their capacity for a future nursery that would allow them to start growing other fruit trees. They are therefore in need of training on how to develop a business plan on establishing a tree nursery.

The women of Lakdirat exhibited energy to work in order to support their families and participate in the progress of their community. HAF is looking forward to supporting them toward the accomplishment of their goals to improve their own lives and the lives of their fellow community members, including through capacity building opportunities via the F2F Program.