By Houria Chouhab

Day 1:

The first week of July, the HAF USAID program Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) team members, Zineb and Houria, accompanied by the facilitator, Hajiba, held an Imagine workshop for the benefit of the women of the Tamount Ntourit cooperative in M’zouda commune, Chichaoua Province.

It was a pleasure for us to have the opportunity to meet with powerful and ambitious women. This training is one of its kind for the members of the cooperative since the cooperative was newly created in January 2022.

The members of Tamount Ntourit Cooperative during an exercise of the Imagine workshop.

Day 2:

Emotion and relationships are two topics that can’t be discussed easily with rural women. If one does not take the opportunity to hear what the heart says, it’s really bad to ignore the feelings…. Love is the feeling that nobody is brave enough to express even between mother and children… stingy of emotions.

The second day is usually the day when women start to absorb the notion of empowerment and start to leave their comfort zone. They start sharing their weaknesses and their strengths, and they open the door of those feelings that have been hidden inside and set them free.

What is most beautiful about this step is that the women provide each other with pieces of advice and try to comfort each other.

Day 3:

In each IMAGINE workshop, the third day is the day when the women come to the training in their best beauty and wear clothes they usually wear for weddings.  This demonstrates the state of happiness they are at and how they consider this training as an occasion worth celebrating.

The topics vary but the purpose is one: to clear the visions and get rid of the refraining beliefs. Sometimes it gets hard to let go of what you have wrongly believed for years, but if there is a will there is hope.

Day 4:

On the last day of the training, there are feelings of satisfaction for the trainers and sadness for both sides because the moment of goodbye is soon enough. The women try to ask as many questions as possible to be fully enlightened, and the trainers happily answer them, hoping they provide satisfactory answers. This day is also the day when the women receive their certificates; it could be the first time they do that, but surely not the last time.

The HAF F2F program and the women of Tamount Ntourit Co-op after receiving their certificates.

The women are looking forward to benefiting from other F2F trainings, and they are aiming at HAF’s support to develop their cooperative.