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The desert town has been gaining recognition thanks to its specialized carpets since 2014. Here, women working in the El Mensej association earn a living by selling Turkish-style kilim rugs.
Nefta, a quiet town in the south of Tunisia, is renowned for its desert oasis and palm groves. The desert town has been gaining recognition thanks to its specialized carpets woven by women folk since 2014.
Here, women working in the El Mensej association earn a living by selling Turkish-style kilim rugs. They are helped by a social enterprise-Shanti- that helps artisans from across Tunisia to reach buyers. An old pair of unraveled jeans becomes a raw material for a designer carpet. Women engaged in carpet making buy the material from second-hand markets and unstitch them to weave carpet from a product, that has almost no value in the market and make a living from waste material.
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A carpet woven by the womenfolk, mostly older ones, can fetch the US $43 apiece, An artisan can weave up to a maximum of four a month. In the town of some 22,000 people, the social enterprise Shanti has set up a haberdashery where weavers have free access to recycled balls of wool. Shanti is a family business. The carpets are now sold to design-conscious Tunisians. Others are exported or sold to firms such as the manufacturer of the Spanish brand Zara.
