By Zineb LAADAM
HAF Field officer

On February 9th, 2023, HAF’s Imagine empowerment facilitators met with 18 women from M’salla Cooperative in Jnanate village, located in the Beni Boufrah municipality of the Al Hoceima province.

These women are joining the ranks of 2,373 others from around Morocco that have benefited from the 101 Imagine workshops that HAF has facilitated over the last seven years.

The participants are involved in an agricultural cooperative in which they are selling medicinal and aromatic plants. They know the importance of empowerment, and they are interested in building courage to seek out and take advantage of opportunities to improve their social and economic situations through their cooperative. Empowerment of these women is maximized by collectivization.

The workshop provides these women with a way to create an intensive practical experience in a short amount of time, especially since they may be too far apart to gather together regularly.

Women proclaim, “ I can’t live alone—I need people around me to share with them my happiness, strengths and weaknesses.” If we hear someone say, “I want to be alone and get away from people,” further discussion reveals that they cannot be alone for a long time because life insists on us being with each other. As one woman began to speak: “Making a good relationship with others first requires a good and honest relationship with ourselves. We learn that if we don’t give to ourselves first, we cannot help others.”

In practical terms, this cooperative’s vision for the future is not limited to marketing their products. They want to benefit from the HAF’s tree planting project to grow skincare plants on their land instead of buying them, as well as attend training workshops about the “green” cosmetic technologies, which HAF can assist with by its implementing the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program in Morocco.

We appreciate all the hard work that women put into this workshop, and we truly look forward to continuing to follow this women’s cooperative and see all that they accomplish!