• You want to ...
  • Your profile
  • Leisure and Discovery
  • Events industry
  • Professionals and Amateurs
  • Children and School children
  • Your desire
  • Relaxing
  • Family fun
  • Make a beautiful object
  • Impress your friends
  • Develop your skills
  • Our trades
  • Craft industry
  • Cooking
  • Well-being
  • Culture
• Ateliers d'Ailleurs
  • Our values
  • Pricing
  • The team
  • Book an activity
  • Once there ...
  • Guestbook
• More infos
  • Riads in Marrakech
  • Directory
  • Know-how
  • Newsletter

• Craftsman: A. Zahra
• Craft: brodeuse
• City: Marrakech

It is within the association Al Kawtar , who aims to promote the autonomy of women with disabilities by giving them access to work, that our embroidery courses are held .

Ateliers d'ailleurs wanted this collaboration in solidarity with these women, but also to allow visitors to discover the working environment so special, where passion and personal commitment make sense around a traditional craft.

Al Kawtar was created in 2006 through the encounter between Zahra, a young Moroccan degree in Islamic Studies, and the owner of a riad in Marrakech. This latter liked then the idea of developing a project for disabled women. The union between two women, their strength of character and their work for the establishment of the workinggroupe has finally accomplished.

Zahra is now the manager of the association  in the same time dealing with the riad.

Organized around trades embroidery, crochet and knitting, Al Kawtar will also enable women who work to develop their personal skills, their moral well-being and physical, while giving them access to literacy courses.  the association has now twenty-six women and integrates in  its activities one or two new women every quarter. In 2009, the relocation to new place in the center of the medina is expected to double its current workforce to achieve together a team of fifty people.

The workers master all the traditional techniques of crochet, knitting and embroidery practiced in Morocco: El Fassi El Rbati, cross stitch, stem stitch, habik ... But they go further and use their creativity to develop an aesthetic renewal and a mark unique to the workshop ... It reconciling deep authenticity (with fabric or natural materials used) and a remarkable modernity (in the choice and color matching for example) Al Kawtar today ensures its success.