Aim: The long and protracted crisis in Syria has led to a widespread prevalence of food insecurity and overall economic instability. With a high share of agriculture in Syria’s formal and informal economy, the sector continues to be very promising for humanitarian/developmental interventions to usher in the process of the nation’s early recovery. With this in mind, the Food and Agricultural Organization along with COSV partnered on project NABTA to attain the twin objectives of enhancing local agricultural enterprises and as an extension, food security in Syria. Through mentorship, coaching and seed funding, the projects aimed to support the creation of sustainable agri-based enterprises and entrepreneurs and augment process of local resilience building in Syria.
Results: As part of its activities, 60 business ideation workshops were conducted for the benefit 1500 agriculturalists in four governorates- Hama, Homs, Aleppo and Rural Damascus. Done in a phased manner, after the first round of ideation-based workshops, 22 business training workshops were conducted for 450 beneficiaries selected from the previous phase. From these beneficiaries, seed funding had been planned for approximately 150 businesses. A core outcome of this project has been beneficiary access to continuous mentoring and coaching support for business model optimization. Continuous project monitoring across phases has been done for progress tracking.
