#10 Innovative Business Case: Comana Crafts Village (RO)
- Promoting traditional rural crafts that would otherwise be forgotten
- Encouraging the use of natural, non-polluting and bio-based materials
- Bringing jobs and visitors to the local rural community
The Crafts Village, located at the doorstep of Comana’s natural park in Romania, is a nice blend of care for the environment, rural traditions revival, arts and crafts, education, and entrepreneurship.
In their open spaces, they run workshops about seven traditional crafts for children and passionate people: woodworking, reed mace weaving, pottery, embroidery, milling, blacksmithing, as well as traditional processing of fruit and vegetables. It’s unlikely to find another place in Romania that regroups so many different crafts all together. Their courses employ only natural, non-polluting and biobased materials, in line with the circular economy’s principles.
The founders have left their stable jobs in Bucharest to dedicate themselves to preserving the old rural crafts in Romania. This activity, which received funding from the Norwegian and Romanian Governments, is closer to a social enterprise concept than to a competitive business model.
Yet for the rural development of the local community, the impact is great. Comana Crafts Village created jobs for people that would not have found them in another company, and commuting people left their jobs to work there, locally. Eventually, the benefits reach out to the whole rural community, which now welcomes thousands of visitors every year.
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