Empowering Women with the Help of Honey Bees

Plan Bee Investing in WomenChanging Lives

In a country rocked by civil strife, Hashoo Foundation Women's Empowerment through Honey Bee Farming Project Plan Bee is taking the sting out of unemployment rates in Northern Pakistan. This area has high levels of poverty and illiteracy, which is a fertile ground for militancy and terrorism, and income-generating opportunities, especially for women, are rare. Initiated by the Hashoo Foundation in 2007, Plan Bee trains rural women in honey bee farming and creates employment opportunities and a sustainable source of income through the sale of high-quality honey. Hashoo Foundations ability to connect the producers to the market is what makes this project one of the most effective economic empowerment projects in these remote and isolated mountains. Plan Bee serves as a social-business model which uses a multi-sector approach and promotes women as the means of their own economies. Recent surveys indicate that the women are now earning 35% of the familys income. The money they earn is spent on their children's education and for providing them with better nutrition. The women have become more self-confident and involved with family decisions and activities in their community. Women beekeepers participating in Plan Bee hold key leadership positions within the Honey Bee Associations. The women expressed they feel more socially integrated in a male-dominated enterprise, primarily because the project addressed the discrepancy between male and female beekeepers.
To date, Hashoo Foundations Plan Bee has trained 949 women in honeybee farming and developed a honey value chain of the micro entrepreneurs. Training courses are taught in the local languages and cover all aspects of the beekeeping, including beehive management, the extraction process, hygienic packaging, transportation of beehives, logistics and marketing. 3,089 beehives have been distributed and 50,000 kg. (110,000 lb.) of honey produced and sold to the market. More than 1,200 girls and boys are now attending quality schools as a result of this project. The project has enabled over 7,500 dependents to have better health, nutrition and education.

Sustainable economic development projects, like Plan Bee, will strengthen vulnerable communities and help promote a more tolerant and inclusive society in Pakistan.

Plan Bee Award & Recognitions

The successful Womens Empowerment through Honey Bee Farming Plan Bee Project has been recognized for its sustainability for local and international organizations: - Plan Bee BBC World Challenge 2008 Global Competition Award Winner - Hashoo Foundation's Women Empowerment through Honey Bee Farming Project a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Featured Commitment - TEDx Talks Cristal Montaz for Hashoo Foundations Plan Bee - Jefferson Awards Youth Service Challenge Winner with the opportunity to help empower women to support their family and educate their children, and increase revenue to invest in honey producing microenterprises that generate employment and income, both locally and internationally.

Keynote Speaker
Cristal Montaz Baylor Executive Director, Hashoo Foundation USA cristalmontanez@hashoofoundationusa.org

We enable and empower communities to be independent by facilitating equitable access to opportunities.