Inaash, a Lebanese registered charity, has for 40 years resiliently preserved Palestinian heritage through embroidery and provided economic empowerment to women. Today it has approximately 300 women engaged in embroidery of its high-end products, which include jackets, purses, pillows, and other clothing and accessory items, with customers around the globe. Inaash is setting an aggressive turnaround strategy to transform its production line into a successful fashion and design social enterprise that can sustain its activities within 2-3 years and to broaden its impact to younger generations.

Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Currently Lebanon hosts close to 450,000 Palestinian refugees in 12 camps.
Conditions for the communities living in refugee camps in Lebanon are notoriously difficult. Employment opportunities are limited and the level of unemployment is extremely high for men. At the same time, traditionally it is not usual for their women to seek employment outside their immediate surroundings. Living on aid and handouts is neither sufficient for needs nor conducive to psychological wellbeing. It was these social problems that led Huguette Bechara El Khoury (daughter of Lebanon’s first President) to establish Inaash as a way of creating employment and providing an income for refugee women confined to the camps. The one transferable skill the women brought with them to Lebanon was traditional embroidery.

Throughout the last 5 decades Inaash has worked to both preserve this culture and harness it as a means of livelihood for its practitioners in some five camps located across Lebanon. Since inception, over 2,000 women benefited from the production of Inaash products, both in monetary terms and through a sense of community and continuity. Successive generations have passed on the skill from mother to daughter. Their work with Inaash and the ancillary services it provides have had a positive impact not just on the women but on their families.