Fez- Social entrepreneurship is the process of pursuing innovative and sustainable solutions to social and economic problems. The mission of an entrepreneur is a relentless pursuit of opportunities, which combines leadership skills, strategic thinking, patience, tenacity and confidence. Lamia Bounahmidi is a good case in point.
It’s true that societies develop and prosper because of good, transparent and efficient policies by accountable, inspiring and wise leaders. However, individuals can also play a crucial role in the promotion and development of their countries. Taking initiatives, being socially and politically engaged, and having the spirit and the skills of leadership, individuals can generate positive change in their societies and contribute to the well-being of their fellow citizens.
Lamia Bounahmidi is a case in point in Morocco. At the age of twenty eight, Lamia brought her social enterprise Loly’s into manifest success and won Morocco’s start-up cup after competing with twenty Moroccan enterprises like EasyControl, FRONESIS, Kazakoo, Level One, myVLE, RobEco and others. The five minutes allocated to each entrepreneur to present the idea of his/her project was enough to Lamia to convince the jury of the practicability and feasibility of her project.
Lamia’s Loly’s is a simple yet a very promising idea of globalizing Moroccan couscous and bringing it to the world; hand-made, fine, and authentic. Many cultural critics have written on the Mcdonaldization of the world by disseminating the America eating habits and the effects of this process on the homogenization of cultures. This discourse is undermined by initiatives like Lama’s, which are coming from what is assumed to be the periphery.
Loly’s employs today around 30 deserving women in a village nearby Sidi Kacem (Center-North of Morocco), providing them with a decent livelihood. Lamia, as Mr. Hamza El Mounhi said in an article about Lamia’s company published by MWN, has developed a new yet sustainable model to empower women.
Lamia would not have succeeded in such a project if she had not been equipped with the necessary theoretical and practical skills in the domain of entrepreneurship. After graduating from INSEA, Rabat in actuarial science and financial engineering, Lamia continued her studies at the prestigious ESSEC (Graduate School of Economics and Commerce) in Paris where she specialized in innovation strategy and social entrepreneurship.
Saturday, November 23rd, the day Lamia was awarded Morocco’s start-up cup, was not the end of this adventure, but rather the beginning of Loly’s success story. Following her award in Morocco, Lamia was invited to participate in PITME Labs in the Silicon Valley, USA; a program which aims to turbo-charge the Middle Eastern startup eco-system by providing startup talents from the MENA region with access to the Silicon Valley resources. On March 5 and 6, Lamia will have the opportunity to defend her emerging company during the international start-up competition, which will take place in Armenia.