Learning to Grow

On a side street in the suburbs of Bethlehem, Fatmah Issa welcomes guests to her home with grapes from her nearby garden. It is a small gesture of hospitality, but for Fatmah, such staples are an important part of her diet. They are also the reason she signed up to participate in a Catholic Relief Services-supported training aimed at boosting the productivity of her small parcel of farmland.

"I have apples and grapes — grapes are famous here," Fatmah says. "But we grow only for our family. The land is too small."

Fatmah Issa holds grapes she grew after taking part in a CRS-supported food-for-training program. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

Having lost her husband in 2005 after a long illness, Fatmah has been supporting her five children largely through the help of generous neighbors and friends, who provide what food they can to support the struggling family. Working to earn money by buying clothes at low prices and selling them for tiny profits, Fatmah was eager to sign up for a CRS-supported food assistance program in her village of Al-Khidr. The program is aimed at improving the living conditions of families like Fatmah's in the West Bank.

Through the program, women take part in training programs covering a variety of locally relevant subjects, like skills training for small business enterprises, and farming techniques aimed at boosting crop yields for small farmers. For Fatmah, the training was a chance to learn how to plant trees and how to prune her apple trees to make them more productive.

"Before the training, I had a little knowledge about gardening," Fatmah says. "But now I learned more."

After completing 60 hours of training, participants receive a three-month ration of food from CRS and the World Food Programme, including wheat flour, pasta, salt, peas, cooking oil and other essentials. For many of those in the program, this food makes up the bulk of their family's food supply.

Since the program's inception in 1998, more than 49,000 beneficiaries in the West Bank have received food in exchange for participation in training and working activities.

For Fatmah, this training was just the first of many she hopes to complete. Fatmah wants to enhance her own skills and provide food for her family in the process, as economic opportunities for many rural West Bank residents continue to wither.

"Most of the women who did the training, their husbands were unemployed, so that affected their lives," Fatmah says. "This food is small, but it is important."