About WEEP

The Women Economic Empowerment Programme (WEEP) was launched back in 2000 initially with no more than nine rural women cooperatives in the Beqaa valley.  With time, the programme developed into a complex interventions reaching out to some 40 rural women cooperatives and groups, which are based especially in the Beqaa and South Lebanon.

The programme is based on an understanding of rural women’s multiple, vital and yet invisible roles and economic contributions and the need to promote and visibilise both women’s work, voice and leadership.  Moreover, WEEP is also shaped by the overarching aim to contribute to widening women’s choices and supporting them to attain their rights. The WEEP programme strategies involve capacity building, networking, knowledge and fact finding, policy dialogue and access to market.

Moreover, and in scaling up its WEEP programme, CRTD.A has created Namlieh, an autonomous marketing cooperative composed of rural women cooperatives and which aim is to facilitate a sustainable internal and external market access to women.  A recent initiative called RUWOMED has also been added to the WEEP programme and which seeks to promote economic sustainability amongst rural Lebanese women as well as Palestinian women and youth in Lebanon.