Fibre Mood is a colourful community and naturally, we want our partners to be just as colourful – like De Fikserij – a vzw Kompas employment project. Kompas is a Ghent-based organisation that provides people with disabilities with living, working, leisure, and education-related support. De Fikserij employs people with disabilities who use their gifts on behalf of external customers. Labelling, packing, cutting, administration – they handle it all with flair.
‘De Fikserij is constantly abuzz with activity. We perform semi-industrial work, such as labelling biscuit boxes, filing letters in envelopes, packing boxes with promotional gifts, weighing products to pack into bags, and so much more. Just ask – we’ll fix you right up! We also make sustainable products for our own e-shop, Wijs Gemaakt.’
Nancy, who is responsible for running the project, gets down to it supervising eight to ten enthusiastic employees every day. And thankfully, she's backed up by a few colleagues and volunteers who help keep the project ticking. ‘Every employee has the opportunity to demonstrate the full potential of their talents. What’s important is that we take everyone's pace into account. For example, some are able to work half a day. while others come in several times a week. Every employee is responsible for a job right for them, but we get the job done as a team.’
And Fibre Mood? ‘We take care of the Fibre Mood e-shop's day-to-day management. We prepare the orders, including putting magazines in the correct language into envelopes, addressing, and stamping them. We also regularly assemble hundreds of patterns. Pattern sheets are also inserted into the magazines, which is then wrapped. The magazines are shipped to the shops or end up on our “shelves” for the e-shop. What's great is that we can now put this experience into our own e-shop!’
Nancy knows exactly what this all means – working for Fibre Mood makes it possible for the team to contribute to society: ‘Every day, our employees make a point of mentioning how important it is to do things correctly and get the job done to perfection. And people are willing to pay for those efforts. To be honest, we all get a huge sense of satisfaction out of seeing the outcome of the work in the shop. Hardly a day goes by without an employee letting me know that they've spotted “our magazine” in the supermarket!’
