Rozafa Foundation

Rozafa Foundation represents one of the most successful outcomes of the Project on promotion and encouragement of women micro-enterprises in Albania, funded by MAE (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and implemented by the Italian AVSI Foundation and the Albanian association SHIS.

Registration of the Albanian Rozafa Foundation at Tirana District Court, on 06.12.2005, has been a fundamental structural component to achieving full operation and, thus, to providing a more efficient service in support of the Laboratories of Women Centers of textile handicraft, currently operational, and, in particular, in perspective of promoting and trading the products.

The craftswomen have always carried out traditional and culture-based activities, exclusive to women, such as embroidery, weaving and sewing. Such tradition has turned into a working activity, thanks to the intervention of the project in the field of professional qualification on working techniques. The laboratories include women from vulnerable social categories, focused on underdeveloped rural and suburban areas, from North to the South of the territory.

The structure of the foundation is such as to allow as partners women who are engaged in the Women Working Centers and Albanian staff directly involved in the project.

The establishment of the Foundation made possible the beginning of trade of the items, produced with raw material provided by the Foundation itself. Partial placement of the product has been ensured in the Italian market, while promotion and publication activities have started on the subjects of the laboratory and the products (website, leaflets) as means of disseminating the goal of the project.

The Foundation, considered as a non-profit-making asset and development tool, will continue the necessary work by “serving” also other realities, which are different from it was initiated for.

The incomes from the commercial activity will constitute funds that will be reinvested in accordance with the purposes of the Foundation itself, in function of further development to meet new requirements emerging from a constant evaluation of the social context, with reference to the women conditions.

www.fondacionirozafa.com