Leyla Mahmoudi
Salma Fakhkhari
Al Akhawayn University
Mary Grace Neville
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Providing a sustainable alternative to disenfranchisement by strengthening the country's quality of human capital and reducing poverty is the ultimate goal of Art Naji.
The company is considered a pillar in its local community and strives to provide fair work for impoverished, but motivated individuals, ready to adapt and prosper in the Artisan sector. Aside from creating the best ceramic commodities and traditional zellige in Morocco, Art Naji insists on engaging in upgrading the country's labor market, by following up on key policy challenges, especially those compounded by Covid-19, that are diagnosed and pinpointed by Moroccan policymakers as well as responsible organizations such as The Employment Lab and The No Poverty Lab. Art Naji, therefore, cooperates by identifying unwaged individuals in the area, offering them a new marketplace in a traditional sector where they could earn an income, as well as investing in poverty-stricken communities by donating money directly.
Art Naji's efforts to empower unemployed individuals and create a fair marketplace align with several of the sustainable development goals including "No Poverty", "Decent work and economic growth" and "reduced inequalities."
Art Naji is a for-profit organization that connects with local unemployed people with no financial support and offers them an opportunity at getting educated and obtain knowledge, at the company, on everything the artisan sector has to offer, in order to further access its marketplace to sell their handiwork and earn a decent income. The opportunity completely shifts an unwaged individual's life and puts them in a new path in life to recover from the ramifications of the pandemic, the effects of poverty in general, and pursue a career in the Artisan world, either at Art Naji or abroad with the company's partners, who are always glad to welcome new artisans.
Art Naji teaches the people they work with, men and women, how to become self-sustainable. These jobs give the workers the opportunity to not only have money to put food on the table but also to send their children to school and access healthcare.
Art Naji built a network of handicrafts-men worldwide that can produce high-end, hand-made, high-quality products. Art Naji places a strong emphasis on the quality of its products and teaches the new artisans to be completely transparent with their customers to ensure their trust, as well as making sure their commodities meet the demands of the market.
The innovation is in how Art Naji contributes to its country's economic growth, unemployment rate and aims to reduce inequalities as much as possible. Innovation is also all about the relationship it creates with its community, city, and country in general. We can say that innovation was generated by a load of generational experiences and moral beliefs that the managing director was happy to talk about; he says "I decided to create a system for people affected by the crisis, offering them an opportunity to thrive within our company." The new system in the company may have been induced by the existence of the pandemic, but the owner feels that it is making a great impact on the unemployment rate in the city, as well as influence the performance of the company.
The business has been passed on through generations and according to the owner: "Growing up, I have witnessed my father (former owner of Art Naji) making an impact on his surroundings as much as he could. He used to urge his family to volunteer their time, money, and energy for the greater good. Investing in his community was so primordial to my father that he decided to make it one of the company's main aims."
Art Naji has always worked with artisan groups in over 5 countries to expand the business. With the integration of new elements in the company and the relationships the business keeps on establishing between the artisan sector and the communities struck by Covid-19 and poverty, Art Naji continues to make an impact mainly in France, Italy, Nigeria, China, and the partnerships just keep on strengthening. We see the innovation in how the business analyzes the current state of unemployment and poverty in the country, chooses to offer affected individuals a chance to train in a new field, work in the company afterward and have the ability to join artisan groups overseas.
The innovation represents an important fragment of the company. On the other hand, investing in the well-being of one's society is also a moral belief when it comes to Art Naji.
Art Naji insists on upholding a universally recognized standard of justice and goodness. With the training and job opportunities created, the company has substantially reduced the amount of unemployment in the Old Medina of Fes, as well as all around the city for anyone who was willing to engage in this whole process.
Eventually, we also see the innovation in how Art Naji carries on creating relationships with its environment, with every single individual who requires aid to reduce inequalities and poverty. A substantial amount of donations are consistently made throughout the years, and both short-term and long-term effects are sizeable, according to the communities receiving them. As a matter of fact, when we visited the managing director at the company, we conducted small interviews with a few of the employees who have received aid and asked them about the impact of the donations on their lives. We received great feedback from all of them saying that "the help we obtained has altered our lives and those of our children, it secured most of their education, and we were able to pay some of our rent."
The artisan sector represents around seven percent of the Moroccan GDP and employs around two million people. It is set to continue increasing in growth and small businesses are thriving even with the global crisis.
Art Naji is no different than the rest of the artisan companies and has seen some positive impact on the overall performance of the business. Integrating new handicraft employees in the company has in fact created a friendly and family-like link within the company's departments, as well as a remarkable increase in productivity, therefore an increase in profits. In addition to that, because the company has created job opportunities that allow people to get an education in the field and earn a decent income, the management department has noticed an improvement in brand value because customers take into consideration the extra value that the company adds to its product, generating, as a result, an increase in sales.Art Naji has been making corporate donations since the year it was founded. They allow boosting employee morale by taking a huge active interest in the well-being of their own communities and is what makes Art Naji stand on moral grounds instead of being solely profit-centric or just about philanthropy.
The company's innovation meets our current societal needs. It creates stronger communities within the city of Fez, while also implementing a sense of connectedness for its people. Moreover, it generates a higher level of public trust and meets a basic human need that we refer to as relatedness.
This innovation is an opportunity to create decent work in our society and boost economic growth, especially since the unemployment rate in Morocco is around 11.9% since the start of the pandemic. It promotes a no-poverty policy and supports the sustainable development goal.Get stories of positive business innovations from around the world delivered right to your inbox.
Naji Fakhkhari, Managing Director
Art Naji, an artisan-craft company that contributes to both the country's traditional manufacturing industry, and to the quality of human capital and employment, as it invests in our whole society's well-being.