1. Public  services - lack of effective and comfortable public transportation is one of the main systemic barriers to women's economic participation in Jordan (emerged in sensemaking sessions with UNDP pillars and in exploratory field work). There was also a lack of trust in government and public institutions. 2. While there are some interesting businesses and services in non-urban areas, there is little that can be provided to the market outside the immediate area. Also, few people have bank accounts and therefore don't have access to loans or other bank services which could help with business development. 3. COVID-19 has heavily impacted people’s livelihoods. Issues relating to mental and economic well-being were common amongst the youth we spoke to, as the market doesn’t cater for their educational degrees and they often don’t find public amenities to spend their energy. 4. Handicrafts Sector: Although Jordan’s handicrafts sector plays an effective role in economic development, some projects have a short-term impact,  or as voiced by one of the pillar members are ‘hit and run’ interventions. It was evident from our research that there’s a lack of business capacity training for women, and little proficiency in English may restrict the recognition and advancement of practitioners. Cultural stigmas were also identified as barriers to the investment in craftsmanship skills that are rather perceived as a hobby. 5. Resources: Some UNDP pillar members observed that new generations have abandoned natural resources and projects that don’t utilize existing assets create deviations. While some sensed from the insights that women are aspiring to their traditional roles in society, and many individuals are seeking inherited jobs instead of new opportunities. That said, technology is an enabler, namely for youth, the agriculture sector.

(1) https://www.jo.undp.org/content/jordan/en/home/stories/the-design-lens---exploring-the-future-s--of-livelihoods-.html  (2)  https://www.jo.undp.org/content/jordan/en/home/presscenter/articles/2021/our-portfolio-journey--a-bricolage-of-voices--ideas-and-learning.html

Yes. One of the main challenges was that our sensemaking and exploration were quite open. While this gave us freedom and space to listen and learn from what is happening on the ground and from our UNDP colleagues, we could have used a slightly more specific framing or lens to focus on what we are looking for. We also faced a challenge as a team to decide on the direction of the work and what to experiment with. 

We decided to use observation, informal conversations, and interviews (all primary data) because we felt that the CO was lacking this kind of research, or at least was not doing enough of it. We also felt most data available in the CO was quantitative and we needed more qualitative data. As for the secondary data and use of existing scientific research, we used these methods 1) at the start of the exploration in order to see what already exists so that we don't duplicate work in our research, and (2) also as a way to look into signals or trends that emerged as we did our exploratory research.  

Foresight was used at the beginning of the work to encourage more imagination and critical thinking before choosing a topic. It helped us to get make sense of how problem statements affect different users with a focus on future scenarios and to collectively consider the impact of macro and micro trends that are shaping the future of livelihoods in Jordan. It helped us have a quick reality check that uncovered what people in our team are guessing about, and the type of assumptions and questions we are asking ourselves about the themes we are tackling early in the process. Asset mapping was used to understand that resources existed in the areas we explored, as a starting point for what could be built on for co-developing solutions or in what skillsets we might find existing solutions.  Solutions mapping  was a way to identify what challenges people are trying to tackle, themes for solutions and problems, and actual solutions that we could consider for experimentation.  Sensemaking, data visualization and visual thinking and mapping were useful for understanding, documenting, analyzing  what we found during our field visits, online interviews, and online sensemaking sessions with colleagues.  They also helped with actually running the online sessions. Design thinking was useful for analyzing the data that we were gathering, identifying patterns, and helping us connect the dots between what we found in the field and what we were hearing in the CO.

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We worked with our colleagues at UNDP from the different pillars to 1) understand existing projects at UNDP Jordan 2) connect with local solution holders 3) make sense of the data that we gathered during our field visits.