Safi Crafts

In 1999, a group of women from the local community in Ghor Al Safi Village came together with the idea of creating goods using natural dyes. This is how Safi Crafts was born. Pigments from vegetables – like the red of the pomegranate, the yellow bark of the eucalyptus tree, and the brown of the roots of the Alfawh plant – were used to create the dyes. Under the supervision of specialists in the cultivation of the Nilea plant, which gives off a wonderful blue color, the women began to learn how to best use the pigments. Extracting the color depended on several factors, including the temperature of the water, and the concentration and duration of mixing the pigments. 

These women have proven not only to themselves but also to their community, that they can overcome the challenges facing women working in a rural society. They have demonstrated the capacity to work just as well as their male counterparts while supporting both themselves and their families.

What distinguishes Safi Crafts from the competition is that every color you see on every product is made from 100% natural pigment. Even the way that the women color and decorate each product is unique, as it is either fully manual or through the use of simple, traditional tools. Each design or decoration is created to catch the eye.

This project has changed the women working under it radically. Women and housewives from the village have been able to run a successful business where demands for their goods continuously pour in. This speaks volumes about the impact of their hard work, both in the material items they hand-produced and the intrinsic happiness they supply to their consumers.