zindagi migzara

a bit about my job

I've been in Amman for almost a month now, and I realized I really haven't talked about what I do at my job at all. I work for an organization called JOHUD, which stands for the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development. JOHUD is the largest NGO in Jordan and is kind of an umbrella organization- we have a main office in Amman and then several smaller offices and CDCs (community development centers) around the country. Our basic mission is to promote sustainable human rights, by creating opportunities for the most marginalized members of Jordanian society. We especially focus on women, children, people with disabilities, and rural communities.

I don't work in the main office- I work in one of the smaller offices in Amman- Beit al Bawadi. Beit al Bawadi is one of JOHUDs projects to create sustainable development. Beit al Bawadi is a high quality, very expensive ceramics shop, where customers can buy beautiful handmade ceramics with intricate Arabic calligraphy. It caters to internationals and Jordanian elite, but the catch is that all the ceramics are made in the JOHUD factory by people that otherwise wouldn't have been given the opportunity to have a job.

I came into the company with a job description that included public relations and marketing, but what I've actually been doing has been quite different. My boss knows that I'm more interested in actual development than marketing strategies, so she's given me some pretty cool things to work on. Right now I'm working on a project evaluating the success of about 30 microfinance loans we gave to poor rural women in a small village near the Dead Sea. I went to the village, called Kafrein- about 20 minutes from the site of Jesus' baptism on the Jordan river- and met and talked to some of the women who had received these loans of about 1000 JD ($1300). I was shown three shops: a hairdresser, a clothing shop, and a shop that sold basic homewares. Of course, the problem is that I can only see the successful side of the project. We have information on the women who successfully started a business and have improved their lives, but the vast majority of the loans were not used for their original purpose. And it makes sense: anyone in dire need of finances isn't going to spend a large sum of money on investment, they're going to spend it on immediate needs like food and clothing. I've learned that this whole microfinance crazy is just that, a craze. Of course we hear the success stories, about the poor woman in India who rented out her cell phone to other villagers and is now a thriving business woman. But we don't hear about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who receive loans and don't put it towards a business, eventually sinking even deeper into debt because now on top of everything else, they have a loan they can't pay back. And even when the money is put towards some kind of business, it's always the same thing: a hairdresser, a grocery store, a bakery, etc etc. This isn't sustainable. All of our loans were given out to women, and that brings an even bigger issue into light. Many of the women in Kafrein couldn't use the money towards a business because they simply did not have the power in their family to do so. To deny the fact that many rural Jordanian women have little to no say in their family affairs is simply ignorant. In many of the interviews I took, each woman was asked how much support she got from her husband in her business ventures. Almost all gave the same, automatic answer: My husband helps and supports me very much. But it also came out in many of the interviews that the husband didn't have a job, spent money on useless things in Amman, or wanted to use the money to build something relatively unnecessary (but status raising) like an addition to the house. In other words, they said their husbands were helpful and supportive, but their actions showed something much different.

What is needed in these situations isn't just money, it's a network. Many women in rural communities interact only with their husband, mother in law, and children. Any outside support and interaction often just doesn't exist. Of course, I am only an outsider, so I will always only see a limited part of the whole story. But what I've seen so far has probably taught me more about development than any sociology or anth class at U of I.

posted by Laura @ 1:36 AM