Empowerment through this workshop is ideally seen as a continuous holistic process with cognitive, psychological, social, and economic dimensions in order to achieve a local development by building women’s capacities of Berkane province to improve its economic future and the quality of life for inhabitants.

This training course was shaped around a vision of bringing a wide variety of women together to learn from each other and look critically at their work in the cooperative to build a stronger movement. The participants included youth and adult women with a wide range of educational backgrounds. As the course progressed it became clear that exploring differences was one focus of the course. We sought throughout the workshop to create an environment of support and challenge for all participants.

A set of strategies on research/documentation, networking, influencing, training and media was developed by the women in their cooperatives. However, many of the women who participated spoke about the importance of the challenge of acquiring life skills also and the search for meaning in their lives, they wanted something in their minds “besides the everyday”. Where a workshop creates space for the discussion of issues and for questioning the meaning of “Happy life”, this can lead to exploring the problematic connection between life issues and “getting ahead”. In this way the nature of challenges in life can be broadened and the possibilities of social change strengthened.