Greetings to you all,

First of all, let me welcome you to the portal for the ‘Women Craft Workers Network’. 

This site is devoted to the work of female craft workers in Morocco and Turkey, and we hope to enlarge it to cover women craft workers around the world.  

In fact, from 2007, other similar projects will be starting up – like those in Madagascar and Palestine - and this site will be enriched through their experiences too.  

Our aim is to promote the work of these women by making a big effort to spread information, giving them more visibility and then spreading this pilot scheme to other countries. 

As far as our concrete projects are concerned, I invite you to find out about the projects we have completed in the last six months and to contact us if you would like us to include other craftswomen.

This project has a vision of sustainable development, where the tools of microcredit and savings are introduced to allow these women to develop by themselves and to move ahead into the future by means of calm, responsible decisions.

This programme gives value to human potential and is operating in Morocco in the workplaces of the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD). It works directly to allow populations with no money to carry out their own plans by themselves. 

Our mission consists of :  

   - capitalising on common projects and efforts to reach impoverished populations, especially in rural areas. We support the work of women working in crafts in one region by encouraging them to collaborate with women from other regions, building a network at the regional, national and finally international level.

   - integrating these women into the international circuit and breaking their isolation while respecting their way of life, without any destruction of the traditional landscape or dismissal of ethical constraints. 

This project started up in parallel in Turkey where the needs of women are identical to those of Morocco. A careful research project has already shown results, and after 18 months will allow the development of an appropriate range of products to meet the needs of the market identified in advance.

The dynamic of this project will rely on values of responsibility and rigor.   

Apart from that, the aim of this project is to provide the necessary know-how to support the different levels of production, both in manufacture and in the administration related to commercial micro-entities. 

At the end of the say, these requirements will allow them to move pragmatically into a new market.

Finally, working closely with these micro-business operators, as is necessary, will rely on partnerships with the various organizations and co-operatives already working on the ground.

Ladies, it is you that we salute. To our Moroccan and Turkish partners, we say thank you for your confidence and your dynamism, which still take our breath away. 

We continue to congratulate you for your resources of energy, determination, authenticity and dignity. 

Many thanks, and let’s keep the project going with the same enthusiasm! 

Fatim-Zahra Benharbet
General Secretary
PlaNet Finance Morocco