Homewares Social Enterprise In Casa By Paboy Launches Crowdfund Campaign

“The journey forward has the potential for being stuffed with promise and hope,” says Paboy Bojang, the artistic entrepreneur and designer behind In Casa By Paboy, a social enterprise that with out pressing funding might be pressured to shut its doorways. “So in the present day, I’m asking a particular request which may assist save my enterprise and can permit me to develop as an artist and creator.”

After fleeing The Gambia a decade in the past to flee the brutal dictatorship which dominated the nation, Bojang spent two years enterprise an excruciating journey throughout the desert and Mediterranean Sea. Arriving in Naples in 2015, he got down to fulfil his artistic desires utilizing willpower, resilience and a ardour to pave the best way for different refugees who would discover themselves in an identical state of affairs.

Discovering employment with Antica Manifattura di Stingo, the famend majolica workshop, Bojang established a life for himself in Italy. Nevertheless, his world modified once more in 2019 when the immigration system didn’t renew his asylum papers in time, resulting in unemployment simply earlier than the onset of a worldwide pandemic. It was at this level that Bojang determined to revisit his stitching abilities, which he had developed as a younger teenager working in his uncle’s tailoring workshop in Serrekunda as the principle breadwinner for his household. The expertise and keenness for choosing materials and pairing colors shortly got here again to Bojang and, due to social media and the borrowing of an previous stitching machine, he started to create a collection of signature homeware designs.

Spring 2020, in the course of the first lockdown, noticed the start of In Casa by Paboy, with its hand-sewn, brightly colored, candy wrapper impressed cushion covers catching the attention of design lovers throughout the globe. Rising an viewers through social media, the model went from strength-to-strength within the following months earlier than launching a web site in January 2021. That includes in titles such because the Monetary Instances and The Wall Road Journal, in addition to a global consumer base from Dubai, to Sydney, London and New York, Bojang’s exhausting work began to repay. Grateful for the love and assist he acquired, Bojang seems to be again on his journey thus far with happiness. “You’ve gotten given me an opportunity at making it right here in Europe and most significantly, serving to to work in the direction of a miraculous dream. A dream that has introduced me hope the place many in comparable positions have felt defeated.”

Regardless of the assist, the model is at one other crossroads and Bojang reveals there are vital questions to deal with. “Every month we promote sufficient cushions to cowl our overheads however we have now been struggling to make the mandatory investments within the issues that make a enterprise a enterprise,” he says. “For instance, advertising and marketing, a manufacturing supervisor, even an accountant. With out these components I’m not certain the longer term is sustainable for the corporate. With a number of our enterprise coming via social media too, an ever grasping algorithm means we will now not depend on this avenue of assist.”

Asking for donations through a crowdfunding marketing campaign, Bojang is seeking to take the influence of the corporate one other step additional. “By securing funds it would assist me to construction In Casa as a social enterprise whereby I can provide again to the each the migrant group in Europe and supply employment again in The Gambia so my friends shouldn’t have to undertake the horrific journey I did,” he states. The hope of making one thing which advantages the migrant group in Naples and past has at all times been Bojang’s long-term objective. “My proudest achievement has been to make use of Blessed and Ibra, permitting them each entry to authorized contracts and due to this fact papers for themselves,” he reveals. “They’re one step nearer to their dream of creating Italy a everlasting dwelling.”

Bojang’s imaginative and prescient is proof that design can be utilized as a power for good. Constructing a platform for migrant artisans like himself and serving to them to pursue their desires might be pivotal in growing accessibility for such creatives. Urging for us all to hitch him on the lengthy street forward to fulfil the potential of In Casa, Bojang is seeking to increase £30,000. “With no community or household to depend on in Europe, I’ve solely all of you who’ve supported me up to now to ask for assist,” he says. “Be it a small one-off donation, an everyday contribution, funding or your power, time and pro-bono experience, it would all assist to protecting small companies alive and strengthening the pathway for creatives like myself to fulfil their desires.”

Due to the relentless work of Bojang and his dedication to alter, he’s rewriting the longer term for a lot of creatives who discover themselves shut off from exploring such alternatives. By means of his optimism, he’s inspiring us all to be part of the change and are available collectively in reshaping a artistic world that’s accessible to all, and creating an trade that’s enriched by it.

Donations to the marketing campaign could be acquired month-to-month or as one-off investments through JustGiving and Patreon.