Bedouin by Weaving

LUMEYO is a social enterprise. One of the leading in southern Jordan. Social enterprise is a modern movement, a label, an attractive name – but for us it is a way of life. Without relating to our environment we could not be a social enterprise.

Business as a way to connect to our Bedouin neighbors

This means: We see our Bedouin neighbors. If there is a power outage, we give them candles so that they can at least celebrate their fast-breaking in the candlelight. When our neighbor’s forty-year-old car no longer works reliably because of an outdated battery, we combine our trip to Aqaba with the purchase of a new battery. Having tea with Bedouins from the neighboring village we create ideas on how to connect our businesses. Soon our neighbors will be selling our bags in one of their tourist tents. They gain by supporting their community, differentiate from others and their commission, we increase our visibility and gain a new LUMEYO location. We take responsibility, include and create Win-Wins.

Business as a way to connect to our Jordanian neighbors

We see our Jordanian neighbors. When we think about the development of LUMEYO, we also think about the growth of our network of social enterprises in Jordan. We meet with NGOs like Oxfam, MercyCorps and USAID, with Jordan ClothingBank and with other social enterprises like InayaPermaculture and BookAgri in the north. We ask ourselves: What common story connects us, what needs do we want to articulate and how can we support each other? How can we work together to develop a creative and social economy that focuses on the SDGs instead of on profits?

Business as a way to connect to the Jordanian visitors

We see the Jordanian visitors. When we spend a vacation day at the Red Sea beach, we keep telling the LUMEYO story there. Because we stand behind the idea of social entrepreneurship. We are proud of our Bedouin bags. We are proud that with LUMEYO we are reviving an old handicraft, weaving, in the Bedouin communities. We’re also proud that our material from second-hand shirts is recycled and 100% sustainable. We are particularly proud of our community of strong, active and sincere women who continue to weave even in the time of Ramadan – out of loyalty and out of a desire to create. It touches us to see the result of our decade of work: Women who fight as a community with a strong presence and high-quality craftsmanship not to be forgotten in an area marked by poverty. We want to achieve more impact and together we believe in our success.

Business as a way to connect to the world

We also see our neighbors outside the Arab world. Thus, we tell our story to big European media companies, we tell it to European universities and we tell it to European fashion labels and big non-profit companies like Ashoka. They promote social entrepreneurship worldwide. We want to gallop ahead because we know that with LUMEYO and the Bedouin art of weaving we empower women, open up perspectives for families and promote the recycling of waste and the sustainability of textile products as a new standard.

Business as a way to weave a network

In our opinion, the only sustainable way forward is the the one of social entrepreneurship. A rethinking from profit orientation to impact orientation. This rethinking is not limited to the company, it is a lifestyle of networking, taking responsibility and invoking the value of awareness to nature. For LUMEYO, all three areas reach far back into the past of the nomadic life of the Bedouins. There lies our wisdom. We know that we are not the only ones using old knowledge for economic innovations. Let’s think of social entrepreneurship as a network in which we weave our knowledge and values together. Marketing, corporate development, financing – isn’t it best for us to do this together?

As LUMEYO we are specialists in the art of weaving. We are sure that we can not only weave Bedouin bags and rugs and pillowcovers, but that we can also contribute to weaving an international network of more social-businesses worldwide.

Inshallah geer! As the Bedouins say…