He pointed to the necessity of generation of employment and creation of income source for villagers in order to reduce migration from villages and said, “as a matter of fact, the rural population has hit from 75 percent in 1974 to 26 percent in the current year, showing a significant decline.”

Given the above issue, “we could not generate employment in the villages of the country, and consequently, people came to the cities from villages in order to make money.”

To create jobs in the villages of the country and also economic empowerment of villagers, “we need to look beyond traditional jobs in the villages,” he maintained.

He expounded on the community-based projects of Barakat Foundation and pointed to the “Aseman” Plan of the Foundation and said, “setting up local groups, empowering these groups, identifying local capabilities and capacities, launching funds to support business, presenting model for the development of business, providing and revising resources as well as setting up development cooperative societies to support jobs have been taken into consideration in Aseman Plan.”

All activities of the Foundation are in consistent with the activities of all executive organizations in the country, he said, adding, “for optimal use of generation of employment, we have introduced facilitators in the target villages to offer necessary training courses to them [villagers] with the aim of developing villages.”

He pointed to the “Aftab” Plan of Barakat Foundation and said, “Aftab Plan of the Foundation backs and supports the Aseman Plan.”

He acknowledged that commissioner institutions are set up in Aftab Plan and effective steps are taken in order to empower the target institutions.

In this regard, cooperative companies are set up with a membership of villagers in Aftab Plan and Barakat Foundation participates in cooperative companies as commissioner institutions, he maintained.

In this partnership, Barakat Foundation and rural cooperative companies account for 49 and 51 percent share respectively, he observed.

The result of this partnership is the construction of workshops and factories that can process, pack, standardize and market rural products.

He pointed to the Mahtab Plan of Barakat Foundation and said, “as a matter of fact, this plan is the Hadi models of economic efforts of Barakat Foundation which include the business models.”

Integration and combination of these three plan i.e. ‘Aseman’, Aftab’ and ‘Mahtab’ plans can generate employment in villages of the country and also can develop villages considerably, he said, adding, “a model that was explained is the result of three years of research done by the research and development (R&D) committee of Barakat Foundation.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, he pointed to the plan devised by the Foundation for the generation of 10,000 jobs in 34 cities of the country through the implementation of community-based plans of ‘Aftab’ and ‘Aseman’ and said “to finance this plan, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was inked between Barakat Foundation and Mehr Iran Interest-Free Bank in order to grant 300 million rials worth of loan to the families and individuals who are applying for employment in villages. These loans are paid to the eligible and qualified families easily.”

In this comprehensive plan, the loan is granted to the support organizations instead of paying the loan directly to the individuals, he said, adding, “for example, if a person intends to provide fodder or breed sheep, support organization will do this work for this person within the framework of rules and regulations.”

Dr. Askariazad then pointed to the underway projects within the framework of community-based plans of Barakat Foundation and said, “totally, there are 30 projects in Aftab Plan which back and support jobs created in Aseman Plan.”

He also pointed to the identification of relative advantages of areas as the main priorities of Barakat Foundation and said, “for example, we have tried to strengthen and support the same products which are produced in the regions.”

The chairman of the Board of Directors of Barakat Foundation revealed the construction of two factories for packing, processing and branding date in deprived Sistan and Baluchestan Province and said, “since farmers in this province produced 40,000 tons of date annually, there was not any date packaging and sales factories in this province. As a result, brokers came from different parts of the country and bought date from farmers at cheap prices. But with the construction of data packaging and processing factories within the framework of Aftab Plan of the Foundation, this problem will be resolved and farmers themselves will benefit from the sale of their dates.”

He referred to the other similar projects of the Barakat Foundation in other areas of the country and acknowledged, “we have devised the same plan i.e. Aftab Plan in Kourin district in Sistan and Baluchistan province for the product of pistachio. In the same direction, the Foundation is constructing a factory in Kordestan province for producing, packing and processing honey.”

Barakat Foundation has also helped an entrepreneur in Sarcheshmeh city in East Azarbaijan province to construct a factory and employ a number of 70 women as breadwinners for producing and packaging of food, he continued.

He revealed the selection of investor’s target regions in a completely scientific and expert process and said, “in some cases, our experts have visited the target area 10 times for investment purposes. For this reason, cooperative society has been set up and all preliminary stages have been conducted and finally, Barakat Foundation has participated in the cooperative society in order to launch factory as a joint venture.”

Since farmers and members of the cooperative society do not have any sufficient capital for launching factory, the initial cash capital has been provided by the Foundation, he said, adding, “when the factory is launched officially and gained profitability, the Foundation transfers its share of partnership to the cooperative society and then exits from the project.”