Scaling Social Impact: Women Social Entrepreneurship in Morocco Written by Ham za El Fas ik i on April 11, 2013 in Entrepreneurs hip, Measure Im pact, North America, poverty - No com ments
Azrou & Ain Cheggag – After attending the “Women and Social Entrepreneurship” tour in Morocco, Moroccan women cooperatives and micro-entrepreneurs learned fear has no place when it comes to leading a collective venture.
Organized by the US Embassy Morocco in partnership with Park National of Azrou and Association Karyati in Ain Cheggag, the event hosted Rahama Wrights, an American social entrepreneur for panel discussions and workshops On March 9, 2013 in Morocco. Social entrepreneurs have always been treated as social change agents. Their willingness to scaling social impact made them rich enough to reach worldwide regions. As a case in the shelf, Morocco and Rahama Wrights are twin-impacts. Two developing small regions, Azrou and Ain Chggag, hosted an historic event. In both regions, local leading women microentrepreneurs specialized in different cooperatives benefited from a worldly recognized experience of a social entrepreneur, Rahama Wrights, founder of Shea Yeleen, a nonprofit social enterprise that imports shea butter from women‟s cooperatives in West Africa to the United States. The event gave an opportunity for local women micro-entrepreneurs to share their stories and their quested needs. Rahama Wrights was a true inspiration for the locals in trusting their dream of a sustainable economic activity. It has been proven that micro-entrepreneurship promises a better future career for populations residing in the BOP Bottom-of-the-Pyramid. According to the „Office de Développement de la Coopération‟ (www.odco.gov.ma), Moroccan cooperatives are governed by the law of October, 5 1984 which sets out the modalities for the establishment and membership, and the compensation of members. Moroccan cooperatives are autonomous
associations of persons united to meet their economic, social and cultural interests through a company whose ownership is collective and where power is exercised democratically. As this is true to Azrou and Ain Cheggag, it is true for what Rahama Wrights have witnessed in different sub-Saharan countries. Women in rural Morocco, as in the case of Azrou and Ain Cheggag, have historically had only a small role in community decision-making. However, cooperatives give them the opportunity to earn money for their families. Moroccan women micro-entrepreneurs have impressed Rahama Wrights with their ability to work as a group in local cooperatives. This has proven to her that they are able to socially engage in different activities that range from producing cheese and making carpets to reproducing natural products – honey, milk, and oil – and running different micro-organizational forms catering for raising goats, rabbits, cows, and flocks of sheep. As a state alumnus of a State sponsored program in the USA – SUSI – Study in the US Institute on social entrepreneurship 2010, I, Hamza El Fasiki, have taken the opportunity to both assist Rahama Wrights in her Scalability-Mission and translate her experience to local women micro-entrepreneurs using simple Darija (Local Moroccan Arabic). This has thought me how different cases of proven social impact can lead to global inspiration, and thus, to local development. Small cooperatives in Azrou and Ain Cheggag are leading cases for how local women can change their life. One of the most prominent challenges that those local micro-entrepreneurs in Azrou and Ain Cheggag expressed was the marketing issues. Several are the cases where the local women cooperatives would produce plenty of products. In many cases, however, these products would only see light in stocks and inventories. At this level, Rahama Wrights played an important role in providing local women cooperatives with the basic knowledge they could use to market their products. Some of these advices took shape in notions related to Innovation, E-Marketing, Communication, and Networking. Rahama Wrights said, making reference to a famous English proverb; “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” On their turn, local women cooperatives agreed on the fact that collaboration can create prominent markets for their products. Not only this change-making meeting opened the eyes of the local women micro-entrepreneurs in Morocco to the importance of collaboration but also encouraged their potentials to more technological issues.
Hamza El FASIKI Head of Research and Studies Moroccan Center for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship
[email protected] / www.mcise.org
Source: http://www.socialearth.org/scaling-social-impact-women-social-entrepreneurship-in-morocco
