Sumoud Barakat

Sumoud Barakat in Nusf Jbail village received a microloan for her sheep dairy project: she raises lamb and sells sheep milk and cheese. She used the loan to buy four pregnant ewes and 1000 kg nutritional feed. The production season has started: all the pregnant ewes delivered, and there are 5 newborn lambs in her barn.

Sumoud, 23, says “I was so excited when I bought them, I always had a passion for raising sheep; I was the one to take care of my parents' sheep and lambs before I got married, and enjoyed every minute of it, now it's time to buy and raise my own!”

Sumoud milks each ewe manually twice a day and makes white cheese and yogurt as well as the milk, all of which she sells locally. Half of the income is used to provide concentrated feed for the animals, and she is saving money to buy an additional pregnant ewe. All the female lambs will be kept for milk production after puberty and the males will be sold at 6 months for meat production.

Sumoud, a university graduate, is well organized, and set up records to track daily production and income. She markets her products locally in her village, and has built a continuous demand for her dairy products. She hopes to expand her small project, buy more sheep, and make enough money to support her husband in building their own home instead of renting as they currently do.

She appreciates the stable income from her microloan sheep business and says projects like this that help the farmer depend on himself are convincing people that sustainable performance is a new definition of a successful project.