go
here is the name of a berber woman amazing woman prefer to say amazing than the word
berber and she is a queen and she is a very famous legend in
amazing history she was the queen that she she won the wars and she was the symbol of the power
and she is inside every amazing woman she describes the beauty
of an amazing woman the power and the strength and the mother the sister and and everything
so um the projects came about because all three of us saw locally here how overnight
all the local artisans suddenly had no audience they had nowhere to sell their products and
overnight they struggled to feed their family and it really is literally struggled to put
food on the table for their family so the three of us were neighbors um we got together
and decided that we could do something and what we could do was try and get give these artisans
a global market a global presence by the internet so that was how it all started it was like right
let's help the local people and let's try and get their products sold into europe and beyond
we for example have looked what are the products that are
next to us like what are the people already doing what are the women doing
a lot of handcrafted morocco is man-made but we also wanted to check what the women are doing
so for example this is a carpet that the local woman from um tamrac made for us her name is zara
it's handcrafted and it's like natural wool and she also makes pillows every part of the
carpet it describes the feeling of of this woman because she was sad and she was crying when she
is making the gap and she was happy and while she she is making the carpet they are singing
she sings with her daughter with her sister with her mom while they are making the carpets in the
center so it's um it takes it takes months because she's doing other things and i mean feeding
the kids taking care of the house of herself then we have a local woman her name is fatma
she lives also in aurea where we are and she makes these beautiful pillows
so we have a lot of artisans around us and then at the same time we have our own the inspired stuff
that we do and this is like a big hard thing because what we're working with is fishing net
so we have still these nets in our oceans and the problem with these nets are um they kill
everything that goes inside and um even if it's not allowed to kill a dolphin if it often comes
inside here or a turtle they will probably just die even if they throw them back into the water
that's it so um we use this fishing net you smell like it's washed but it still smells good fish
a good fish it has work it has it has broad food on table for a lot of people
but at the same time it probably has killed a lot of not necessary like like yeah ocean environment
so we use this fishing net and we combine it with um upcycled things for example um we found these
amazing bags sometimes it's coffee that comes with this to morocco sometimes it's sugar or lemon
it can come from west africa like ghana it can come from vietnam and uh yeah we
make that for example yoga mat matte bags or you can put your cameras tripod inside
we upcycle moroccan cuff dance so inside this you will always find like an old jalapeno or caftan
um so cool so you know and we try to like leave traces that you can really see what it was we
have a fishing net pocket inside so so everything here is upcycled so the leather that we use is
scrap leather so we never know what colors we're going to find and the carpet is second hand carpet
that has been really really used and well worn and we just take the good bits that we can find and we
put them into these bags so the only new bit on this bag is the buckle so there's also like a
like a kaftan inside yeah and that's what we do and this is our own brand
check it out it's handmade by karen she even draws the symbols herself like the logos
it's all handmade one-of-a-kind products
we're happy to grow our tribe and contacts i mean this is what we need now we need
we need the word to get out there we need people to share and we believe we are all one you know so
if we can work together what would be a better place yes and how do you find these artists and
especially women why we have nessa so it's nessa's role and we have her because we love her
she's our creative designer as well so nessa is all things to everybody
um but nessa has lived here all her life so knows the families knows the women knows who is doing
what um and can then introduce us in and see if there's a fit for us and then to work together
being one of the locals here in the village and grow up in this village
i know women here and men but what they love to do is especially women that they don't walk
and inside their houses they are working more than outside so they are rising gifts
and they are taking care of the halves of the husband of the other relatives and
this is the time that they have for themselves they do what they love like making carpets like
sewing trousers like uh socks like bags from the crochet and i saw those women because they are my
neighbors they are from my family and i know what they love to do and uh to make them get out from
their houses and to to to exp to explore what they are doing to the other world makes me always have
questions i really want to help the local women or men to to to do something that is handmade
beautiful and to to explore this tradition the amazing tradition to the abroad i mean
internationally they're american women they don't have they don't trust themselves so
if you give them the trust they can do beautiful things they can make beautiful and good products
so trust is so important if you give them trust and they can do everything it took us many many
times to just find one woman or what she can do or what a man what he can do for us and to talk
about our ideas and if they can understand us more so here come my role and to make them better
understand what we want and what they can do for us i love that i love what we are doing i have a
great team and the women they are happy to work with us too what i like also is that we bring
the idea of upcycling and this is something i think completely or for the local people here
most of them knew i would say that out of something that is already there you
can make something amazingly new that people want and i think because here you have poor
people and you have people that get money and the people that got money and save like same
like other countries you want to buy something posh you want to buy something cool and new and
but that you can create something amazingly cool um and strong and beautiful out of something that
that you would maybe call the waste if you just find it on a secondhand market
this is i think a new thing and somebody made this kaftan or jalapeno and they put
a lot of work in there you know it's made with love like what is it called
fifa i can like this this part and i mean we use it again you know it's not it's not going to work
is unique because we discussed this bag and this is the java that will be inside this bag
and this is this fifa and all the details we work uh to combine everything with our artisans so
every bug is unique for us it's a and this is so important to upcycle the chilabas in our
every product we have products that we believe in you know i believe in our we stand behind
our products because they they mirror our values they mirror our values of a better environment
offer offer um offer we are one of a better future of a clean ocean of a safe planet when you buy our
product your percentage goes depending on what you buy if you buy from our local community like
the carpets or pillows we take a percentage on the site and we have like an emergency
um like an emergency pot for example if a kid you get sick we can support uh if you buy our
products with the fishing net a percentage goes into sea shepherd simply because we wanna we wanna
obviously make it how many families is involved in what community where we're here banana village
it's all the villages it takes from old villages it's our
it's tamara it's tamawansa it can be any weather
and also it's it's marakesh we have artisans also in isabela and in it does not awesome yeah because
we because beautiful carpets are made in tasmania beautiful berber ones in in okay so if somebody
wants to order a product what's the best way to order or approach or go on our beautiful
website that karen created or on our instagram we have an insta shop where we have a facebook shop
yeah and find your find your unique piece and order it and we gonna make it come to you we can
take custom orders but they do take time because we have to go and source the product so if you
wanted a pink jalaba as an example for your inner we have to go and find it it might take a while
but it can be done
so i'm karen originally from england i moved to moronco five years ago now so
i've been living here for five years um and that came about because me and my husband
came here on holiday and we kept coming back and every time we came back we loved it a little bit
more and a little bit more and then finally we said we don't really want to go back to the uk
so uh five years ago we made the the final step and we now leave here permanently
no i love morocco i'm it's my i think 18th time that i came here um when corona came i decided to
definitely make this my home i love this country and i couldn't imagine a better place to be
i have my friends here i have my family here um i have my life here and it's amazing to be here
and i'm grateful and now you have your passport i have yeah i i i there was a corona crazy time
so i i had i got a little glimpse what it means to be illegal in a country without a passport
without any right to be here no more visa no more passport but
um i'm very grateful that moroccans are really relaxed about this list is
i'm from our village
i have amazing roots
wow what a really inspiring story of teamwork between countries
doing our best in these times to make ends meet and help clean up the planet at the same time
what a resourceful group of ladies thank you so much to andrea for coordinating this and editing
the video i'm just doing the conclusion now thank you for making it to this point and check out
the links below if you want to help support this mission and give back to the community in or rear
agadir as well thank you and happy ramadan 2021 from morocco and the whole more acro team