The Project is a programme for financing small projects run by refugee and non-refugee Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank. The Project aimed at advancing small loans to men and women who needed capital for the small businesses they were implementing and managing, in order to alleviate and limit the bounds of poverty, create employment opportunities and raise the living standard of people in the region by increasing per capita income and stimulating the economic role of women. The Project aimed, as well, at activating the role of Palestinians in general, building their own institutional capacity and integrating them in the economic cycle of the region.

The main features of the project may be summarized as follows:

• Extend individual personal loans to men running their own small businesses, where the required loan is extended to the applicant up to the permissible ceiling. The person becomes entitled to a bigger loan if he honours his obligations and pays his installments as they fall due.

• Extend loans to groups of women known as "Joint Liability Groups". These groups consist of women who apply for loans and each member of the group guarantees other members. No new loans are given to any of these women until they all have met their obligations by repayment of the previous loans.

• Train the borrowers how to manage their loans.

The project is considered to be a pioneering one as it succeeded in stimulating the economic role of women and men and in combating poverty among the poorest strata in the Gaza community through its lending activities. It is worth mentioning that it is one of the early projects in Middle East and North Africa that achieved self-sufficiency, both operationally and financially.

Under this project, since its beginning in 1994 till April 1999, more than 18,000 loans were advanced. More than 12,000 persons, of whom 56% were women, benefited from this project. Besides these principal beneficiaries, more than 75,000 persons benefited indirectly from these loans by working for the owners of these projects.

Under this project, loans were also advanced to 6,000 Palestinian workers who were working outside Gaza, but were no longer able to do so for political reasons. Besides, more than 4,000 women benefited from this project and received 10,000 loans through joint liability groups.

Poverty rate in the Gaza Strip region is 38%, whereas it reaches 48% in refugee camps. With the lack of employment opportunities and the dearth of income sources, inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have no alternative but to turn to small private businesses (as pedlars, open-air small shopkeepers, etc) to augment the income of their families. Therefore, this project is regarded as one of the most important achievements of the UNRWA, which managed – in such a weak economic environment - to extend through this micro-credit programme assistance to 7.5% of the population. The importance of this Project lies in the fact that it has become a main source for increasing an individual's income in this community.
 

This is one of the pioneering projects in the field of developing and training of rural women and activating their role to achieve self-reliance. This is done through the Project's activities aiming at promoting income-generating businesses among rural women to enhance their economic conditions as well as those of their families and community at large. This has qualified the Project to win the Category of AGFUND Prize allocated for Pioneering Development Projects.

The beneficiaries of the project are the women of remote villages and small towns in the rural areas of Karnataka State , whose annual income ranges between US$ 300 and 600.

The activities under the project, which are implemented through the members of AWAKE with the help of a group of specialists, include the following:

• To identify villages and rural communities and study their resources, structures and socio-economic conditions.

• To launch campaigns aiming at raising the awareness of rural women in these communities to promote and activate their role through income-generating businesses.

• To organize training courses in small-business management, urging women to make achievements in this area.

• To train trainers to ensure continuity of the project after termination of the activities of AWAKE .

• To prepare follow-up programmes to ensure success.

AWAKE based its project, which aimed at promoting income-generating businesses among women in rural areas, on the fact that women in the Indian society account for 51% of the total population. Imbalances in the distribution of wealth among rural and city dwellers characterize the Indian economy, where the average rural family income ranges between US$ 150 and US$ 600 annually. Women in rural areas work in agriculture with a daily wage of no more than half a dollar.

Therefore, AWAKE started its project in order to become an instrument for economic independence, which leads ultimately to raising the living standard of the family. AWAKE believes that activating the economic role of women will automatically lead to their and their families' social welfare. It also believes that instead of providing and implementing projects that would help improve the health, financial and educational conditions of women, the role of women must be stimulated to encourage them provide such services for themselves. This would lead to enhancing their self-confidence and make them fully self-reliant.

AWAKE has been able to establish its programme in 20 rural area within the State of Karnataka in India. The programme covered over the last four years more than 15,000 rural women, of whom about 4900 were trained in running small rural businesses. More than 2,800 women have already started their own businesses, with an average annual income ranging between US$ 500 and US$ 4,000.

Those women benefiting from the project were able to provide jobs for other women. Moreover, some of them have established self-help groups in some areas. The number of these self-help groups reached 20.
 

Dr. Daniel A. Weiss, the mastermind and founder of the project, is a pioneering humane personality. He is a graduate of the Political Science Department of Ohio University, USA, with a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Management from Minnesota University .

In the summer of 1995, he founded AMIZADE , a Portuguese word meaning "friendship". Daniel Weiss started his project AMIZADE in the Amazon region in Brazil with the aim of preserving the rain forests with the help of the inhabitants of these regions. In 1995 he started work on one of the leading programmes in the city of Santarem in Brazil, where he established a factory for manufacturing footwear for the handicapped for a Brazilian charity organization, which looked after handicapped children. Since the industry for the manufacturing of footwear for the handicapped exists only in large cities, with the help of AMIZADE , it was possible to establish a factory, which satisfied the needs of the city he was living in, with a population of 250,000 inhabitants.

The project consists of a vocational training centre set up in Santarem to train street children and develop their skills. This is to enable them find jobs that would guarantee them an income, lift them from life in the street, improve their living conditions and create a better future for them. The Project was completed in 1996 to become under Postoral do Menol organization, a non-governmental organization established in 1987 for fighting violence and exploitation of street children. AMIZADE ,with the help of other organizations, was able to set up this centre that offers services to 800 children annually.

Following the success of this Project in Brazil, efforts were made to launch similar projects to train the street children in Bolivia, Australia and USA.

The project achieves its objectives through:

• Working in cooperation with local organizations to launch local programmes, through which street children from the participating region are picked up to participate, along with international volunteers, in implementing the programmes formulated for the service of the community.

• Merging the people suffering from isolation with more distinguished groups, by way of providing them with opportunities for voluntary work through social service. In other words, the objective of the social service is to help non-governmental organizations to increase their institutional capacity to cater for the needs of the community.

• Enlisting volunteers from all parts of the world to participate in short-term programmes aimed at serving the community.

• Growth in the number of street children is one of the biggest problems in Brazil. With a rise in unemployment and lack of family support, children generally take to streets. This develops in them a deeper sense of belonging to the street and leads, ultimately, to the spread of prostitution, drugs addiction and other harmful substances among these street children, as well as violence and crime.

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