Core Support for ESDC strategy "Dignity Seeds" ESDC will not be core supported during the bridging year 2018. A new assessment will be done in 2019. The overall aim is  to enable disadvantaged formal and informal women and men groups to engage ‎actively in socio-economic activities.  The project tackles two of their own strategic objectives. Strategic ‎Objective 1: Socio-economic organisations have an economic and social role within their community.  ‎Strategic Objective 4: ESDC achieves its objectives efficiently and effectively and complies with good ‎governance standards.  Within rural sustainable development, ESDC supports women and farmer-‎based organisations, including cooperatives, mainly in organisational and business development and ‎creating enabling environment. Also, ESDC supports sustainable farming and food production as well ‎as building farmers' resilience to fight poverty's root causes that threaten Palestinian small ‎producers because of the occupation and enabling them to adapt to climate change.  ESDC will work to ‎build the organisational and business capacities of member-based organisations, including ‎cooperatives. ESDC promotes organised member-based organisations, and ‎will apply a non-discrimination and meaningful participation approach in order ‎to instill ownership and transparency among the target group ensuring the active participation of existing and potential ‎members and the engagement of women and men, girls and boys who live in poverty and ‎whose rights are violated, who work together to reach common goals.  The expected results are: ‎
• Member-based organisations and initiatives adopt internal policies that are consistent with ‎good governance best practices. ‎
• Member-based organisations and initiatives operate businesses and services that are ‎relevant to their mission and members ‎
• Women, youth and farmers actively engage in social economy organisations and pioneering ‎‎cooperatives
• ‎ Small-scale producers are organised in a socio-‎economic groups, to protect their rights and ‎develop their businesses and achievements 
• ESDC has an effective planning and monitoring system
• Institutionalized gender mainstreaming in all aspects of operations. The project has conducted orientation workshops for selected MBO where they were introduced ESDC’s main programs and main achievements during the past year, beside introducing them to the previous project achievements and the 2018 project outputs and activities. This included facilitating the participation of MBO in the local marketing festival of Bethlehem, with around 15 products and conducting workshops related to training and preparing financial manual for four MBO, beside administrative manual for two. The project worked towards gender equality activities by developing a gender assessment tool that analyses the current gender situation inside the targeted coops. The project has also successfully conducted gender assessments for beekeepers' cooperative of Jenin governorate, Burbarah women Charitable society/ Aboud, AL Ibdaa Agricultural cooperative/ Deir Ballout and producing three gender integration strategies for the MBO mentioned. The project has produced a film regarding increasing awareness of women access to resources. In addition, the project has contracted a gender specialist to prepare ESDC gender policy. Two workshops had been conducted with the ESDC rights-holders in this regard besides two workshops with the employees, personnel meeting with sample from staff and board, personnel meeting with two donors (We Effect and Oxfam), beside literature review of ESDC documents, system, hierarchy, admin and financial system, studies and printings. A gender policy is currently being finalised. In addition, a 3-day training session for Jenin women self-help group about quality control and enhancing the production environment through supplying them with tools for food processing that meets the healthy standards and contribute to quality control was conducted. (Stainless steel table for food processing, stainless steel mixer, refractometer, electronic balance, insects trap). The project has focused on environmental issues, which has included radio and tv appearances regarding the impact of climate change on olive trees, specifically the effect on members, and designing and implementing environmental demonstration sites about recycling the beeswax and reuse it. The cooperative members used to get rid of the used wax through burning it, now they are able to reuse it through environmental friendly action. Furthermore, in the village of Deir Ballout, snake cucumber festival was supported and facilitated including supplying the printings required for the festival that call for supporting and advocating of the Deir Ballout Valley women farmers “queens of the valley”. The Deir Ballout festival contributed by marketing  50% of the produced snake cucumber from 500 cultivated donums, which impacted 200 families providing 10000 ILS NIS average profit for each family. The project has also supported networking and learning by participation in school cooperatives seminar in Malaysia, conducted by the Malaysian Cooperative movement ANGKASA in coordination with the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) and contributed in three networking activities for ESDC. ESDC became a member in Global Socio Economy Forum (GSEF), contributing participation in the Fishermen forum and covering ICA membership fees. The project also followed up previously formulated Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) by providing the required training and guidance, beside updating their data and follow-up on the income generating projects where VSLA members benefited with loans from their savings. The total loans granted in 2018 from the old groups is 281000 ILS NIS through 162 loans (25 for income-generating projects, 24 for enhancing houses, 32 for education costs, 13 for treatment purposes, 68 for consumption). 30 new VSLA groups were formed in Hebron and Jenin and Tubas, where the total members are 422, of which the vast majority are women and total savings so far are 86520 ILS NIS.