Projects

Project Description:

Social sustainability is one of the most important dimensions of sustainable development. This dimension, along with environmental and ecological sustainability, can lead to comprehensive development. Social sustainability has a very close relationship with the issue of participation and social justice. These principles are encompassed in community-based development programs.

EDF prioritizes socio-economic empowerment of local women in Sistan and Baluchestan province through community development plans. EDF leverages the participation of the local people themselves to resolve neighbourhood issues. They achieve this by forming self-help groups, creating collective micro-businesses, and establishing local organizations. After setting up these institutions, EDF plays an instrumental role in facilitating their stabilization and development.

This project has been underway since 2010 in marginalized areas of Sistan and Baluchestan province. The initial steps involved forming women’s self-help groups and micro-savings funds. By relying on local capacities and the motivation and ability of local women, group businesses have successfully emerged. Teaching social and professional skills to the target community has led to the development of the individual and social capacities of people. This, in turn, has improved the quality of life for both individuals and the community as a whole. The creation of local institutions centred around local women remains a critical goal of the community development plan. Hoda House of Zahedan serves as a successful example of this approach. The project has been implemented since 2010 in Shirabad neighborhood of Zahedan city, since 2016 in Komb neighbourhood of Chabahar, and since 2022 in Zabol, Zahk and Nimroz cities of the Sistan sector of this province.

Hoda House:

Hoda House is a network of safe spaces for the socio-economic activities of women who live in peripheral neighbourhoods in different cities across Sistan and Balouchestan province of Iran. Started as a self-help group engaging in needlework and creating handicrafts, Hoda House blossomed into an impactful CBO. Today Hoda Houses are community centres for education, health, and entrepreneurship. All the members of Hoda House are local women.

The first Hoda House was established in 2011 with the participation of 60 local needlework artisans. The Women and Youth Entrepreneurship Development Foundation, a nationally active non-profit organization, played a facilitating role in the creation of Hoda House.

In 2014, with the support of local community leaders, local women were able to rent a space in Shirabad, the largest informal settlement in Zahedan, to develop their collective business. With the expansion of educational, technical, and vocational training services, Hoda House was officially registered as a non-governmental organization (NGO) with the Sistan and Baluchestan Governor’s Office in 2016.

Today, Hoda House operates under its official name, The Hope Association for Marginalized Women.

Project Goals:

• Develop skills, capabilities, and assets of the local community
• Increase local community participation in local development
• Improve the negotiation power of the local community, in line with its development
• Engage the local community in development programs
• Improve the quality of life for the local community
• Institutionalize local participation in the form of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs)

Self-help groups:

The creation of self-help groups develops women’s collective businesses. This is achieved by creating local micro-funds that involve all stakeholders of the local community. The goals include forming small businesses that support sustainable livelihoods, emphasizing local delicacies of the region (needle embroidery, black embroidery, tourism, etc.), creating micro savings funds, institutionalizing self-help groups as local NGOs, developing local and extra-local markets, and providing social insurance to groups.

EDF entered Zabol with this project in the summer of 2022. With the help and training of local facilitators, four self-help groups with 80 women members were created.

Development of Hoda Houses:

One of the main focuses of EDF is to facilitate the local community development in the long-term process, through the Hoda House development plan. Joint actions between EDF and local community members have led to remarkable achievements in more than a decade of activity in the field of local community development. All evidence indicates significant growth in empowerment processes among Hoda House members. The expression of satisfaction among members themselves and even their children and other relatives confirms this success. However, one of the main issues considered by the members of EDF is the ability to advance the course of actions in the long-term, by continuously improving processes and developing existing Hoda Houses. This model can be reproduced in other cities of Sistan and Baluchestan, as well as other provinces. A project called the development project of the existing Hoda Houses is currently being implemented.

Achievements of community-based development projects in Sistan and Balouchestan

The primary objective is to empower local facilitators to improve the quantitative and qualitative aspects of community-based development projects. The operational goals are to create educational content and provide it to local facilitators through virtual and in-person training sessions.

Target Community:

The target community is young people from the South Khorasan, Khuzestan, and Sistan and Baluchistan provinces who are interested in learning facilitation and meet the following criteria:

1. a) aspire to work on facilitating sustainable livelihoods
2. b) have 2 to 5 years of experience in empowerment projects
3. c) are active members of an NGO within the target community.

“Economic empowerment of women using information and communication technology”: This research was a continuation of one of EDF’s earlier research studies in 2017 and 2018. The study aimed to investigate the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and ways to overcome them. Jointly conducted by the Iranian Presidential Office for Women and Family, the National Association of Women Entrepreneurs, and Japan’s Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the results were presented at an international meeting on “Macropolitics in the field of women’s economic empowerment” held by the Sasakawa Foundation of Japan. The results were also published in a book in Japan.

“Effect of the spread of Covid-19 on businesses in the field of information and communication technology”: This study was defined as a part of the previous research, in collaboration with the Presidential Office of Women and Family Affairs and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan. The study aimed to describe the effective role of information and communication technology during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic for small and medium businesses. The results of this report, along with the previous report, were presented in a virtual meeting by the Iran Vice President of Women and Family Affairs, EDF, and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation of Japan on March 19, 2019.

“Report on existing support for small and medium businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic in other countries”: EDF prepared this report to help reduce the damage caused by Covid-19 to society. The report was prepared in May 2020.

Education has been an integral part of the foundation’s programs, projects, and activities throughout its institutional operations. From community-level training (ranging from skill development to collective business growth) to educational projects such as the School Entrepreneurship Rooms, My Business Path, and capacity building for NGOs, the foundation has made significant achievements in the field of entrepreneurship education for women and youth.

The foundation’s current focus on local community development led to the formal establishment of its Education Unit, which began its activities in the first half of 2022. This unit is responsible for capacity building and the development of both internal and external stakeholders of the foundation.

Objectives of the Education Unit

• Capacity building and development of local facilitators at the provincial level.

• Expanding the foundation’s network of trainers in local community development.

• Strengthening and empowering the foundation’s internal and external stakeholders.

• Enhancing the capacity of NGOs aligned with the foundation’s mission at the national and local levels.

• Utilizing the foundation’s educational capacity for women and youth entrepreneurship development in other sectors (e.g., consultancy, organizing educational events, etc.).

The Participatory Learning Initiative for Sustainable Livelihood Facilitators

This initiative is an innovation by the Entrepreneurship Development Foundation in community-based online education, developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The program offers a comprehensive training course covering attitudinal and skill-based learning in facilitation, community-driven development, and sustainable growth, with a focus on group-based and local businesses.

This intensive online course includes educational workshops, individual and group exercises, as well as interactive networking opportunities. It is designed to empower facilitators and local institutions to improve the quantity and quality of projects specifically focused on sustainable livelihoods. Participants in this project are primarily from three provinces: South Khorasan, Khuzestan, and Sistan & Baluchestan.

With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation has resumed in-person facilitation training, focusing on participatory learning and capacity building for local and indigenous facilitators in Sistan & Baluchestan.

Each year, the Education Unit reviews and updates the training content of the Sustainable Livelihood Facilitators initiative through its team of trainers and operational team.