When hiking opens business opportunities for Palestinian Women
Nisaa FM: - Opportunities for women are few in the West Bank. However one community initiative based on the hiking trail Masar Ibrahim al-Khalil is offering a chance for women to welcome tourists, sharing their experiences and culture along the way.
New business opportunities in Palestinian villages
Four years ago, Misada Muadi Murra and her husband Abdu began hosting international tourists in their home in Kafr Malik. The couple had been approached by the community-based tourism initiative Masar Ibrahim el Khalil, which manages the 194-mile (312km) walking path of the same name that runs through the West Bank. With funding from the World Bank the Masar Ibrahim organization supports female communities, providing training in hospitality, cooking, English language, sewing and embroidery.
“We really want foreigners to see how our lives are,” says Murra, who also works at the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Youth and Sport. Offering homestay accommodation provides a secondary income for Murra, who holds a master’s degree in sociology and speaks English. She welcomes visitors who come to see a different Palestine.
Homestays and meals for hikers
Around 150 women are involved in offering homestays and meals for walkers on the path, says Amira Jaber, the Masar Ibrahim’s women and community development coordinator. They are organized in 17 women’s centers, each with up to 10 women working in food production and hospitality, and 23 homestays along the trail’s length.
At Ras al-Auja, near the ancient city of Jericho, Noura Abu Kharbish, 27, has four children and is pregnant with a fifth. She manages bedding and accommodation, and prepares traditional meals. Here, it is she, rather than the male members of the camp, who rules the roost. “I serve the guests here and prepare everything for them in the tent. When they feel happy, I also feel happy.”
Kharbish rises every day at 5 a.m. to bake fresh “shraq,” cellophane-thin flatbread, on a heated steel drum.
She describes how she has grown in confidence from the experience. “It is not just financial; I meet people from different countries, and learn more about them,” she says. The language barrier is not necessarily an issue: “There is a translator, but for me to feel happy, it is enough when [guests] smile at me, to feel that I did a good thing for them.”
The women earn from providing meals and homestay accommodation at around $15–20 for a lunch and $30–40 for an overnight stay. Hence, this brand of community tourism is helping some of Palestine’s most marginalized women, like Kharbish, to build skills, confidence and financial independence. nguage, sewing and embroidery.
Welcoming Strangers and combating economic barriers
Despite the fact that female literacy rates in the Palestinian territories are high, Palestinian women often face disapproving attitudes about employment and experience difficulty maintaining ownership of their own finances. Data shows that GNI per capita for women in Palestine is $1,766, against $8,651 for men.
A lack of job opportunities is a barrier to development in the West Bank, where women suffer higher levels of unemployment than men. In 2016, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the unemployment rate among Palestinian women willing and able to work was 44.7 percent, compared to 22.2 percent for men.
In the village of Duma, southeast of the city of Nablus, Susan Dawabsheh hosts around 12 guests per year – usually foreigners. Dawabsheh earns around 100 shekels ($29) per guest. Although her husband is still the main breadwinner, she has been able to supplement the family income, while remaining at home to look after her four children.
“I feel proud and more confident,” she says. “It is also an exchange of cultures – seeing people and finding out about their lives.”
Source: www.newsdeeply.com