• In Sudan, PROSPECTS specifically focused on supporting female groundnut growers in areas hosting refugees. There was a higher proportion of women participating as growers in groundnut production. The most relevant pathway was to support refugees and host communities to organize into cooperatives to provide services for themselves. The intervention organized female groundnut growers into cooperatives to address their otherwise limited access to markets. It also supported them with regard to value-added production and finance matters. A long period of awareness-raising, training and learning-by-doing was required before female groundnut producers from the refugee and host communities felt comfortable shifting from individual production to a cooperative structure. The added value of collective production was particularly relevant for female growers from the refugee community, who generally had lower levels of social and financial capital compared with their counterparts in the host community. It was important in this case for the programme to accompany cooperatives to the point where they saw the added value.
• In Ethiopia, the interventions were targeted at the dairy sector, which was replete with dairy cooperatives and showed considerable productivity and job-creation potential. A partnership was established with Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse to provide technical assistance and support entrepreneurship and cooperative development for women and young people in host and refugee communities. Read about a Somali refugee’s journey towards forming a women’s cooperative.
• In Jordan, the approved amendments to the cooperative law mandated that at least three of the six representatives from the cooperative movement on the Jordanian Cooperative Corporation (JCC) Board of Directors be women. Strengthening the cooperative movement in Jordan has also helped many women-led cooperatives in the area. Learn more about their stories. 

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender and disability inclusion.