o       Olive trees: Providing theoretical and practical training to farmers about the scientific and environmentally friendly methods to care for the olive trees.
o       Applying Integrated Pest Management methods to poor and vulnerable farmers, through minimizing the use and decreasing the cost of chemicals to improve their product quality and enhance environmental biodiversity. This has led farmers to change their behaviour toward applying environmentally friendly farming methods using bio alternatives in agriculture decrease in outputs’ cost and opening new marketing channels.
o       Livestock improvement, Beneficiaries receive different kinds training in new technical and scientific methods of livestock caring. Following that, a bundle of medicines and related veterinary accessories were distributed to each beneficiary, this intervention is directed toward localities with high dependency on livestock caring reflecting the fact that it is considered the major source of living; those areas are highly affected by the separation wall that cause high rate of unemployment as they lost their jobs in Israel and thus shifted toward livestock caring.
o       Gravity drip irrigation systems for vegetable gardens using chemical free methods of cultivation. Targeted areas have limited access to natural resources and live in high poverty.
o       Land reclamation that aims to generate income for poor farmers and improve their living conditions through developing and managing the natural resources of land and water toward a better productivity.
o       Marketing: ESDC conducts marketing activities with the intention of linking the targeted cooperatives and self help groups with the market by creating awareness of the locally processed products in the local Palestinian market as well as external international markets. Moreover, ESDC conducts linkage workshops between the targeted cooperatives and self help groups from one side and the commercial stores from the other side in addition to the specialized marketing exhibitions that the ESDC conducts periodically. Another intervention is targeting farmers that are members of cooperative societies, through building / renovating greenhouses, and providing capacity building and know how to farmers, in addition to train them on how to fulfil the phyto-sanitary requirements and market protocols for selling their produce in the local and external markets.
o       Revolving Fund: The purpose of this program is to increase the efficiency and financial sustainability of the targeted cooperatives and improve the services they provide to their members and communities through providing them with institutional micro credit services. The short tem results are to develop the economical situation for the coops members through lending them short-term loans, promoting the concept of cooperation and teamwork through establishing savings system in each cooperative, developing the capacities of the targeted cooperatives, contributing in decreasing the rate of unemployment among the members by creating job vacancies from the established micro projects, and solving the sudden and unexpected financial problems.
Objectives