Innovation

Marrakesh Organics was brought into existence in 2014 by Omar Hajji, after he transformed a damaged, abandoned land in Marrakesh into an organic farming and training center devoted to learning and sharing sustainable living practices. What makes Marrakesh Organics special is its promotion of an integrated system encompassing the advocacy of sustainable shelter, water security and energy efficiency, as well as inner peace and healing.

The center offers certified courses in permaculture design and ecological farming to interested individuals from all over the world. These courses are taught inside the farm for the duration of about two weeks, during which participants get acquainted, live together, share personal stories, learn and work with each other. Attending the program requires all participants to be respectful of each other so as to foster peaceful, intercultural dialog. In addition to considering the collective farming work "therapeutic," the center promotes inner peace by integrating meditation sessions and nature walks into all of its programs. M. Hajji explains, "Such an environment not only promotes the healing of the environment, but also that of the souls and bodies." Indeed, growing vegetables organically heals the environment, eating naturally-produced healthy food heals the body, and the inner peace and intercultural activities heal souls.

Places like Marrakesh Organics, insists M. Hajji, help people heal by going back to nature and reflecting on today's world, which is full of consumerism and therefore violence to the soul. In fact, we would find that there is violence in the way products are made and exported if we were to track back to the sources of the food we consume, the clothes we wear or the phones we use. M. Hajji suggests that societies should move from a consumption mindset to a production mindset, turning villages in Morocco into self-sustaining communities or eco-villages creating their own sustenance and prosperity without any need for outward migration or government intervention.

Inspiration

In 2007, Omar Hajji was living in the United States. There he discovered the real meaning of community living and peace as he became involved with a Muslim spiritual group that organized weekly gatherings with activities such as cooking, praying, building mosques and houses, and collecting clothes to help the homeless. Five years later, Omar Hajji was in Thailand, where he discovered the meaning of farming, eco-villages and once again spirituality. That spurred his participation in sundry trainings in Kenya, Sénégal, and Ethiopia too, studying permaculture and environmental restoration, ecological designs, and sustainability as a route to empowering communities. The idea of community and spirituality, coupled with his passion for permaculture design, eventually lead to him founding Marrakesh Organics.

Overall impact

The Marrakesh Organics project started off as a personal pursuit that its founder was driven to achieve. However, in only two years, it has developed into an "ecological healing center," as Omar Hajji likes to call it. The mission of the center resonated with people, attracting admirers locally and internationally. Interest drove the business towards new endeavors such as training workshops for permaculture and natural shelters, hosting guests, selling organic vegetables, providing consultancy services on ecological projects, as well as leading events on inner peace and spirituality.

M. Hajji recalls, smiling, that after only three days from the start of the training, participants are happier, and start opening up more, sharing stories with each other in a family spirit full of trust and respect. He describes that change saying that "all layers of defense mechanisms start crumbling down."

Business benefit

Thanks to its unique mission and approach, Marrakesh Organics is flourishing day by day, bringing profits to its founder, enabling the farm to prosper and the trainings to multiply, while also creating more employment opportunities to inhabitants of the nearby villages. Almost immediately, many schools, organizations and individuals started contacting the center for workshops and talks on sustainability and permaculture topics.

In return, Marrakesh Organics keeps spreading awareness of the importance of sustainable living and local community empowerment. M. Hajji's hope is that the business reaches a maximum of people and communities, and that we start seeing more and more initiatives involving eco-villages and self-sustaining communities.

Social and environmental benefit

Beyond making profit, Marrakesh Organics aims to raising awareness about sustainability and its impact on healing people and the Earth simultaneously. Omar Hajji insists that we should all shift from having a bad relationship with nature into embracing it, trusting it and working with what it has to offer instead. He is convinced that ending our fear of nature is the key to living happily in a peaceful society.

According to Omar Hajji, nature has always worked the same way, and can abundantly provide us humans with all that we need and more, as long as we trust it. Once we start living in peace with nature, we will see resources equally distributed amongst us, and society itself will start living in a world of abundance and peace (mind, body and soul). That is Marrakesh Organics' vision and the message it aims to transmit to the world.

Interview

Omar Hajji, An Organic Healing Center