Karama foundation for Social and Cultural Development was founded in 2016 as the developmental arm of GebRaa social enterprise. Karama aims at safeguarding Egyptian intangible cultural heritage, focusing on handicrafts at risk of disappearing, through helping to achieve economic, social and cultural development for artisans by preserving, promoting, enhancing crafts at risk, and transmitting their know-how to younger generations.

Karama currently runs a project to revive traditional Egyptian inlay craft. We work on multiple tracks to achieve our goals, we empower existing artisans through building their capacity by training them on business and technical skills that would enhance their quality of life. In addition, we provide them with new and creative designs developed by renowned designers to enable them to access new markets. Moreover, we work on transmitting the crafts’ know-how through training new generation of inlay artisans selected from different communities, including women and people with disabilities, by experienced inlay craftsmen.

Karama’s team in collaboration with the artisans and designers worked simultaneously on multiple activities & we successfully delivered two building capacity workshops for existing artisans, trained social workers on the inlay, and our first group of the new generation of inlay artisans graduated and they are planning to continue with the training. In addition, we succeeded in prototyping new inlay designs. Moreover, we launched our website to start the marketing phase and created our blog to raise awareness about the craft at risk and artisans’ distinguish work.Through the project, Karama was able to provide technical and/ financial support to a total number of 18 workshops,