In a group of villages in rural Bethlehem, World Vision is training women to become beekeepers. This unique skill gives women in need a new way to provide for their families by selling the honey they harvest for extra income. Through beekeeping, women are finding a new sense of purpose and hope for the future.

October 2009

By Jennifer Chiodo, World Vision Jerusalem, and Jane Larson, World Vision U.S.

Amidst the gentle buzzing of hundreds of bees, Hajer Shaqra removes a honeycomb from one of her beehives. She is covered head-to-toe in a sturdy white beekeeping suit, and wears long rubber gloves on her hands. However, even the suit and gloves cannot prevent the occasional sting.

The stings do little to deter Hajer. “This project has added a lot to my life,” she says, “and I will never leave such a project, even if I am the only one working in beekeeping.”

A 38-year-old Palestinian mother of four, Hajer is constantly searching for ways to increase her small income to support her children. Her husband is visually impaired and has back problems. He works part-time in construction and barely makes enough to provide for the family.

The Shaqra family is not the only one struggling during times of economic difficulty and political unrest in Palestine. According to the United Nations, 59 percent of the population of the West Bank lives below the poverty line, especially Palestinians living in rural areas.

In the city of Bethlehem and surrounding areas, Israeli military checkpoints and road closures make travel difficult and limit resources for families like Hajer’s. Often, there is not enough food to go around, causing malnutrition in many Palestinian children.

The buzz

World Vision has been working in the West Bank region for 30 years, trying to bring wholeness to this war-torn area of the world. The Women Empowerment Program began as a way to support local women in the area, who often bear the brunt of conflict situations.

The beekeeping portion of the program provides 120 women in nine Bethlehem villages with an opportunity to earn extra income through selling honey. The women are taught how to manage their beehives, feed the bees, check for eggs, and check the wooden frames of the hives for diseases. They also learn how to harvest, package, and sell their honey.

The goal of the program is to begin small, income-generating beekeeping projects for as many different families as possible, with a long-term objective of improving the local economic situation as a whole.

If all goes well, the program will produce an average of 352 ounces of honey per year, resulting in $340 of profit per family. This is much-needed income for the women involved in the project. For Hajer, beekeeping provided the solution she was searching for to provide for her family.

Becoming beekeepers

Hajer’s village, located in the very poorest region of Bethlehem, desperately needed an income-generator like the beekeeping program. Like Hajer, many of the women in the village were looking for a way to earn money. They found that the beekeeping program could be a profitable trade, but it is by no means an easy one.

Hajer agrees that the labor is a challenge. “Beekeeping needs effort, and it sometimes needs more effort than the women can tolerate,” she says. However, despite the stings and hard work, Hajer and the women of her community are forging on, believing that the benefits of the project far outweigh the difficulties.

Making it their own

After World Vision trains the women in beekeeping, they are ready to start marketing their honey. Each woman contributes a small amount of her own money to the group, and this helps foster a feeling of empowerment and ownership in what they are working toward. “The amount of money [contributed] is not big, but [the action] has a big influence among the women. They feel that the project is their own,” Hajer explains.

Through beekeeping, the women have also learned about business management, economics, and marketing. They can apply these useful tools in many areas of their lives. Feeling more than ever like a valuable part of their community, Hajer and the women of her village find that even their relationships with each other have grown and blossomed in the shared experience of beekeeping.

“I believe,” says Hajer confidently, “that this project will have an increase in return and production if women continue working together for a long time with it. The other women and I are committed to the project and try hard to succeed.”

There is little doubt that they will.