My Story

Intro

In some of the most remote and poor areas in Pakistan one can find artists who create most beautiful handmade crafts through precision, creativity and hard work. Transferred over generations and practiced over years, their skills create the state of the art artifacts with an amazing blend of geometry and colors. While, the amazing creations were found to be unique, the creators are unknown, unheard and living in adverse circumstances. Their dependency on local traders, lack of information and reach to the bigger markets and lack of basic amenities was enough to ignite the sense of social responsibility. Jamil target those artist to improve their living condiitions while preserving their art.

About Me

I would say I am a technology entrepreneur by profession, a social entrepreneur by passion and researcher by interest. The very idea of evaluating the odds is the social sector and turning those odds into evens through successful development ideas has always been an exciting brain storming for me. This addiction kept me involved in different development projects with Nike Inc, United Nations Development Programand other organizations. I was a part of core team that conducted the first ever research on CSR in Pakistan titled, “State of Corporate Social Responsibility in Pakistan”, covering over 100 organizations in Pakistan and later published by UNDP. This involvement in the social sector helped me to learn about key problems and issues faced by the underdeveloped societies and I developed a vision to contribute to the social sector and promoting the triple bottom line through social enterprises.

I derive my inspiration from ordinary human beings who brought change through the sheer will and passion they had to contribute in their respective fields. A few of my philosophies that keeps me moving are summed up in the following quotes,

• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative. - Woody Allen
• There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is one less than you are capable of living - Nelson Mandela
• Smile is a universal language for courtesy and umanity - Jamil Goheer

My Venture

I founded Cultural Classics as a social enterprise based in Pakistan in 2006, and our aim is to contribute towards the economic empowerment of the skillful artisans. In addition to the economic empowerment, this platform serves as a bridge between these secluded populations and the global community through bidirectional information flows.

Cultural Classics has adopted an innovative approach to use emerging online tools and technologies like ecommerce, social media and Internet marketing to develop a brand for these artisans and their handicrafts, open the path for their products to the global markets and setting information sharing channels between the artisans and global community. These initiatives intend to bring a positive change in the lifestyle of Artisans and their communities and maximizing the fair distribution in the value chain. Our tag line is, ‘Empower Artisans – Build Hope’.

Our products include different types of handicrafts, which are sold through distributors, retailers and wholesalers with a presence in global markets. Now we have brought these products on the Internet to facilitate consumers. Our services include capacity building of handicraft manufacturing individuals or clusters present in different hard to reach areas of Pakistan.

Cultural Classics is a social enterprise sustainable through earned income and grants at the moment. Cultural Classics plans to establish sustainability on earned revenues in the next 5 years with profits reinvested in growth initiatives. Our target is to reach out to 10,000 artisans throughout Pakistan while establishing almost 17 supply chains of unique handicrafts and skilled art.CC plans to evolve the current web portal into global knowledge sharing portal with all the information about handicrafts, skilled art, artisans and cultures from around the globe shared by the global community.