Promoting & exporting high quality Egyptian handicrafts to international markets

The Challenge

With Egypt becoming a country destination of refugees and asylum seekers and currently hosts over 270,000 refugees, a large majority of the refugees live under the national poverty line and are unable to secure employment and generate income to support themselves and their families due to lack of education, training and skills.

The Organisation

Yadawee (meaning ‘handmade’ in Arabic) was established in 2002-03 by Hisham El Gazzar and Tarek Sheta with a mission to promote and export high quality Egyptian handicrafts to international markets. Yadawee train women artisans from disadvantaged backgrounds including refugees and migrant women to produce authentic crafts using local material. Through this work the women can generate reliable and dignified income.    

Yadawee joined MADE51, a global UNHCR brand that offers refugee artisans income generation opportunities in host countries. Together, Yadawee and the UNHCR created the Nilfurat workspace where approximately 30 refugee women from Syria, Sudan and Eritrea have been working in since 2019.  

Alfanar's Support: Looking Ahead

Alfanar will help Yadawee train and hire new artisans from both refugee and local communities by establishing a 3-year transformation plan and a proper M&E system enabling Yadawee to grow their social impact and reach.  

Yadawee is part of our SEMD Project, a regional project initiated and funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by GFA Consulting Group and Endeva.   

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