Struggling Economies
Lebanon Palestine and Jordan have some of the highest rates of unemployment in the world.
The economies of the countries Anera serves are all strained. In Gaza, a blockade and regular bombardments have decimated the local economy and cut off commerce. By some estimates, Gaza’s unemployment rate is the highest in the world. In the West Bank, checkpoints and walls disrupt the flow of labor and trade, limit imports and exports, and hamper development. In Jordan, unemployment is alarmingly high among youth and women. And Lebanon has suffered an economic collapse that has frozen bank accounts, led to sky-high inflation, and made the currency almost worthless.
Anera works within these harsh realities to build livelihoods so individuals and communities can pursue dreams and withstand new challenges that may come.
Economic Development
Because of our deep roots in the communities we serve and our experience in confronting all-too-regular crises, Anera is able to build up livelihoods in the harshest conditions. We do it by monitoring market needs, opening learning opportunities, providing equipment and capacity building, creating infrastructure, and putting people to work.
Anera provides vocational training, cash-for-work, and apprenticeships tailored to match market needs. In Lebanon, our vocational training courses have launched thousands of youths into careers in nursing, construction, IT, farming, cooking, graphic design, sewing, and more. We also provide young people with on-the-job, cash-for-work experience delivering humanitarian relief in their communities.
Across Palestine, our Women Can program has worked with hundreds of women to help turn their entrepreneurial ideas into businesses. They are, among other things, raising livestock, selling handmade clothes, running restaurants, and opening beauty salons. These heads-of-households can now support their families.
Our work with farming families spans Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. A small plot of land or an empty roof provide ample space for Anera agronomists to erect greenhouses with water-smart growing systems. Families can grow what they need to eat and can sell the rest for income.
Anera’s school feeding program in Gaza sources its produce from farmers who have benefited from our agricultural programs and employs women from a local cooperative that is part of Anera’s women’s economic empowerment program to prepare nutritious meals for kindergarteners.
Our projects also directly provide work for people across a variety of sectors – construction, civic planning, health, education, and more. Staff come from the communities they serve and they work with local contractors and institutions to deliver quality programming.
How We Help
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Training & Education
Anera provides market-driven training and vocational education opportunities so that young people and entrepreneurs can build up the skills they need to run their own businesses or find good jobs.
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Infrastructure
Anera builds infrastructure like schools, community centers, cooperatives, greenhouses, recycling facilities and more to provide spaces for learning, working and coming together for mutual support.
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Apprenticeships and Cash-for-work
Anera creates links with local businesses to place newly trained young people into apprenticeships. We also employ new grads or members of cooperatives to deliver relief programs.
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Staying Local
Anera works with local contractors and businesses when implementing projects to add to local economies and to build the capacities of the community. We also integrate programming to create local value chains so that projects are sustainable beyond the life of the grant.
FILM
This film features six people who have flourished over the years thanks to the on-going support of Anera's community of donors.
