Innovation around heritage
The founding concept of the Baladini kitchen was centered around the revitalization of traditional foods and transformation of them into market-ready products. The team sought to find ancient Egyptian foods that were disappearing from formal markets and turn them into creative products reflecting the rich biodiversity of the area and competencies of women passed on from generation to generation.

This began with research of the socio-biological characteristics of local recipes and traditional products. The Baladini team was then guided through a series of creative cooking exchanges with outside volunteers. Volunteers were chosen based on their passion for cooking, creativity, and knowledge of high-end markets. Through these exchanges, the teams explored new shapes, new flavors, and recipe variations.

The result was a unique line of food products different from anything available on the market. Baladini's handmade pasta was adapted from an Italian recipe using locally grown and indigenous "balady" wheat and eggs. Pizza's, meanwhile, were chosen due to rural women's skills in making and flipping flat breads at home – and were crafted using exclusively local and traditional ingredients, such as date syrup, rural Egyptian cheeses, and indigenous chicken. And the Baladini betaw – a traditional corn bread with fenugreek that has been made for millennia in Upper Egypt – was transformed into a cracker with a variety of unique flavors and spices.

Skills workshops
Educational activities formed the foundation for setting up the Baladini production kitchen. This began through a series of collaborative assessments between the Baladini team and mentors on women's skills. A full curriculum for food production was adapated to the women's needs, and trainers were sought out.

Trainings were held weekly for 7 months. Once a month, a monthly review series was held for self-review and assessment of the knowledge the gained. Prior to each training, a Nawaya consultant worked with each trainer to adapt their training to Baladini's contexts and perspectives.

More specialized skills that were not required across the whole team – such as scheduling, accounting, operational efficiency, marketing, and product development – were taught through one-to-one coaching over periods of weeks or months.

Inclusive working conditions
In the beginning, compensation rates and work hours were decided through a facilitated dialogue between the business coach and the Baladini team. Inclusive hiring procedures were also put into place. New entrants were interviewed by multiple women from the Baladini team. They were then introduced to the entire kitchen staff, and given time to showcase their knowledge and build relationships by working directly with them in the kitchen.

As Baladini grew in size and number, the core team began to recruit for new women from the village. At this point, the team didn't seek specific skills, but instead focused on recruiting those with interest and motivation to join a small-scale food production enterprise. The principle was that anyone could find a place within the Baladini learning environment.

On-the-job learning
The Baladini program was designed to guarantee a certain level of work for participating women, in exchange for their commitment to attending weekly workshops and trainings. This helped ensure financial needs of women and their families were at least partially met.
Working while they were engaging in workshops had the main purpose of giving women the opportunity to directly apply their learnings. Peers would help and remind one another of lessons learnt, and the mentor would help guide decisions. This work was partially subsidized by grant funding, and partially by business revenues.

Emotional support
Creating spaces that embraced both positive and negative emotions was important to Baladini's growth. Emotions were accepted, embraced, and dealt with directly in the kitchen. The mentor would also offer emotional support to help build self-confidence, pride, and a sense of ownership. Baladini worked to introduce space for compliment-sharing, where individuals praise each other for their strengths, talents, and contributions.

Artisanal production
The Baladini enterprise sought to mark a passage of traditional food from homemade to artisanal production. To do so, much effort was put into determining how products could be produced more "efficiently", while still maintaining that unique "handmade" feeling. For new products, outside mentors worked closely with the Baladini team to co-develop new processes related to production flow, placement and efficiency of employees, shape and size of the products, and packaging. This would begin by the mentors and team members closely monitoring and tracking production efficiency. Ideas for improvement – including using food production technologies – would then be discussed between the mentor and woman responsible for production. These were then shared with the entire production team for feedback. The production team would then try various adjustments to the process, and the production lead would monitor progress in their notebooks based on the use of timers. The mentor and production lead would meet every 2 weeks to discuss improvements and suggest continual changes. After a period of 2-3 months, products improved in their efficiency by 30-40%, significantly reducing costs and increasing profit margins.

Specialization
As business opportunities began to be more serious, the business consultant suggested specialization by focusing on one prominent local farm product and producing an entire line of high quality foods with that as the core. Due to the popularity of the pasta, pizza, and betaw products, the team chose grains as the primary specialization. This allows for quality, standardization, and efficiency to improve dramatically. The specialization allowed focused energy on the development of new flavors, varieties, and compliments for the original products (which previously had not been diversified). Time was invested in improving efficiency, packaging, and branding, as well as researching and purchasing proper equipment. The result was product quality and standardization improved dramatically.

Testing in safe markets
In their early stages, many products were not yet standardized enough for formal markets. The Nawaya team thus sought to first establish relationships with trusting enterprises and open-air markets where women producers and store vendors could directly interact with customer bases. This helped to create safe spaces where rural enterprises could pilot products and obtain feedback, while minimizing risk of market failure. Members of the Nawaya team and volunteers would often act as "intermediaries" with direct customer interactions, helping in particular to bridge barriers by reducing customer prejudices towards rural communities while protecting the dignity and pride of women from Baladini.

Values-based marketing
Baladini's primary market entry point was through high-income, specialty markets. The program sought to tap into a rapidly growing base of urban consumers in Cairo seeking fresh, healthy, good tasting food products. They sold products through farmer’s markets, local stores, online shops, and special events, and delivered caterings to individuals, development agencies, and embassies. In particular, they focused on finding or creating spaces where customers, clients, and stores adhered to principles of fairness, values, and respect. A marketing consultant helped to isolate opportunities for expansion and pitch products to customers.

The Baladini brand was co-created with outside consultants and volunteers. A brand and slogran were designed to illustrate and emphasize the core values of the enterprise. Labels on each product tell a specific story about the product's creation, history, and nutritional value. Marketing materials, a promotional video, the website, and even the team's uniforms were all designed based on the core collective values of the team. The Baladini name itself – combining "balady" (meaning "local" and "traditional" in Arabic), and "ini" ("many small things" in Italian) – was invented to illustrate concepts of heritage, artisanal, and diversity.

Product standardization
Once products were selected, the Baladini team was walked through a comprehensive process for standardization. This began by testing each recipe several times for consistent quality, then logging all ingredient measurements and step-by-step processes for reproduction. Packaged products were also tested for conversation, and ingredients were researched for local sources, quality, and nutritional value. Products were costed and priced, various packaging options were explored, and labels created with the name, ingredients, story, and suggestions for use.

Financial management
A structure for financial management was set up between a business coach and two Baladini team members. They established systems for quotations, receiving orders, invoicing, and accounting. A weekly schedule for tracking incoming and outgoing cash was set up, always with both Baladini team members to help ensure accuracy. To insure transparency and help establish trust, financial data was collected and logged into an online shared document, which was available open-access to anyone on the team. At the end of every month, this team would prepare a small financial report to share with the entire organization.

To help manage cash flow – which can be difficult in a small production enterprise – Baladini worked with vendors to create regular schedules for ordering, payment, and delivery. They requested payments be made no later than 30 days after delivery, and preferably sooner. This helped to guarantee cash payments did not arrive too long after production, and reduced cash flow challenges.

Decision-making & information flow
To help teams make informed decisions, spaces for sharing information and making decisions inclusively were established. Structures were designed to share information more transparently. Organizational data was logged into online documents that were openly accessible to anyone on the team. Customer feedback was also collected and collated into short reports for the team.

A weekly meeting structure was introduced, where all team members could bring up any issue that was important to them and guaranteed it would be addressed. Major decisions were reserved for those meetings. These processes helped to ensure decisions considered all perspectives and every team member understood the rationale behind the final decision. The in-kitchen mentor helped to both coach women to follow these practices, as well as share information and collect feedback from women who were not able to attend meetings.
The team also worked to share information through simple mechanisms such as group messaging apps (e.g. WhatsApp). Various groups – such as "production", "business", and "markets" – were for sharing relevant information. When decisions needed to be made outside of meetings, a requirement was put in place that any potential decision would be shared on a WhatsApp group to get advice and feedback. Voice messages were often used, to help ensure illiterate women could participate in the conversations.

Cases Studies

Small-Scale Farming in North Africa

The cases below are examples of alternative models we have co-build with small-scale farming communities. We've outlined them in detail to help others replicate the approach.