Meet Assiya

Coopérative Femmes Bensllou de la Passementerie
Founded in 2010
Craft: Passementerie (Bracelet-Making)

Assiya has always loved to learn; school was her favorite place in the world and, more than anything, she wanted to be a teacher. Naturally, when forced to stop her education, she was devastated -- Assiya felt as though she was missing a key part of who she was. Angry and lost, she refused to let her circumstances determine her fate and began to teach herself passementerie, a bracelet weaving technique that roughly translates to “trimming” for the decorative nature of  the final product. The challenge of the craft allowed Assiya to find herself again and, as she began to enlist more women, she was able to teach just as she had always dreamed of doing.