In the spirit of giving back, we wanted to dedicate this week’s blog post to the training programs we did this year as part of our partnership with the United Nations Development Program. We have, and always will be, a company based on empowering women, and so we’re proud to have teamed up with the UNDP to promote educational/training programs for women in Lebanon.
In 2011, the United Nations Development Program Lebanon signed a Memorandum of Understanding with our brand in which we committed to donating 10% of our profits to support educational projects for women across Lebanon to foster income generation, marketing of products, entrepreneurship, and starting up businesses, and vocational trainings.
This year, we hosted a three-month training program in Cyr, a city in South Lebanon, where we selected 35 women to participate in a joint entrepreneurship and administrative board member training session. Our goal? To improve the economic situation in the lives of these women - and many more to come - whose incomes depend on producing traditional foods and preserves such as jams, syrups, and other dried traditional supplies such as cracked wheat “Borghol”; dried beans, zaatar and other foods.
“[The women in the training program] were eager to learn and make a better living for their family. They are smart, strong and intelligent women who care about their children's future.” says our CEO, Sarah. “The United Nations team and I talked to each of these women to understand what they were looking to learn with this program, and how we could tailor the training to best fit their needs.” (Sarah’s sister, Yara, works closely with non-profits, and has been instrumental in fulfilling our brand’s mission with this project!)
We have been directly inspired by ancient Middle Eastern bathing rituals, and as a company that is based in Lebanon, giving back to the community is an integral part of our brand DNA. Through our initiative, we support the UNDP’s goal of achieving gender equality and empowering women. For more information on our partnership, check out our Senteurs Women page, as well as the UNDP website.