Improving Women’s Income Project, Dandara Village

The project’s objective is to set up a revolving fund program in the village of Dandara in Qena targeting female-headed households and young women of the village. The project will provide direct access to financial and non-financial services to the target group as part of the efforts to promote the culture of entrepreneurship in Upper Egypt and economic empowerment to females in marginalized and rural communities. Canada Fund will provide seed capital of L.E. 80,000 (in addition to 5,000 as a contribution from the organization) to support a total number of 70 loan recipients with an average loan size of L.E. 1,500 during its first year of operation. In addition to providing basic financial services, the implementing organization will provide basic business development services (BDS) to the women entrepreneurs. Specifically, the organization will provide training in food processing specifically with mushrooms, tomato paste and pickles.  This kind of processing is directly related to the agriculture nature of the village and the market needs in this region of the country. The organization will work in collaboration with the Regional Economic Development Cooperative (REDEC) Qena (initially established by the Business Development Support Services Project (BDSSP) to act as the SME facilitator and to provide technical support to the organizations and the women entrepreneurs. The underlying vision beyond this project setup is to build the capacity of the implementing organization to serve in the future as a provider of basic financial and non-financial services in the village of Dandara and to generate employment opportunities as a means of economic empowerment to women and youth in Upper Egypt.