The “Enhancing Women Participation in the Solid Waste Management Sector in Jordan” project contributes to improving women’s quality of life in North of Jordan through enhancing their livelihoods and wellbeing. The entry point of this project is women’s economic empowerment and equality as means to addressing barriers that are hindering women from active participation in their communities as workers, entrepreneurs and change makers, with the understanding that real women’s economic empowerment exists when women and girls have similar opportunities to men and boys in terms of knowledge, economic opportunities, gender sensitive policies and decision-making power and access to and control over assets and resources. The Project focuses on empowering women through improving effectiveness of women organizations to actively represent and support women voices in decision-making processes, increasing participation by women in the local economy, enhancing gender informed and responsive policy making at community and national levels, with particular focus on the Solid Waste Management (SWM) sector. The project targets women in three municipalities which comprise Northern Shouneh District and an additional municipality (within Kourah District) all in Irbid Governorate. According to the census of population and housing results 2015, the demographic and socio-economic data of the Northern Shouneh district shows that women are 46.4% of the total population while men are 53.5% with a gender gap of 7.1% in favor of men. Moreover, number of households in the Northern Shouneh is 24,659 households, and average family size is 5.8 which is considered high in comparison to the national family size average of households which is 5.5 (according to Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation poverty pocket Socioeconomic profile for Northern Shouneh). Social indicators show that male-headed households comprise 87.8% while female-headed households comprise 12.2%. This project is designed to use the UNDP niche and experience in the solid waste management to provide interventions aiming at empowering women economically, strengthening their voice and representation at the local level, and enhance the institutional capacities to accompany this process. Furthermore, this project will benefit from UNDP global and regional experience in implementing such projects. It will also link and build on other relevant interventions implemented by other international organizations, government, and others. The Project will secure as an end result job opportunity for 600 women through green business group projects in the SWM sector, in addition to further capacitating 46 women from an existing project. It will also target women in the communities and within the CSOs for other support. The project is implemented through partnership with the Ministry of Local Administration (MoLA) and the Joint Services Council of Irbid (JSC-Irbid); who are the main project beneficiaries as well as the civil society in northern Jordan. Under this framework and following site visits and technical evaluation of the current situation, a Construction of a new building is currently under implementation to establish a composting processing and packaging center as well as a sorting facility (steel structure – hanger) as per the design drawings and specifications provided by experts in the earlier designing phase. The composting and sorting facility which are currently under Construction located in Deir Abi Saed, Irbid, north west of Jordan near to and adjacent to the Jordanian valley area, where the site is owned by JSC-AL Koura and managed by JSC-Irbid management. |