Creating dignified social integration with meaningful training and work opportunities for current and ex-prisoners
Reshape Ceramics
Project description
Duarte Fonseca, Non-Executive Director of RESHAPE, shares:
At RESHAPE we aim to have a positive impact on the lives within prison community, creating equal and better opportunities for successful and dignifying integration in society.
Reshape Ceramics is a project that helps us fulfil that vision, by creating unique and handmade ceramic pieces, transparently and fully produced by former and current people in our prison community, with all the profits being reinvested back to the company to scale the number of lives impacted.
We are a small-scale artisan production with 2 locations: a workshop inside Caxias’ Prison and a studio in Lisbon. All our pieces are fully handmade using Portuguese and Spanish raw materials in the most sustainable way possible. We believe in second chances. For raw materials and for the lives that make them.
As we see it the only way to reduce recidivism is by empowering people that have gone through reclusion - the therapeutical powers of ceramics, alongside with having a job and individual support ease the difficulties of transition into freedom.
As such, with this project we aim to lower the barriers of reintegration for the prison community, by creating employment opportunities and giving them professional skills.
Website: reshapeceramics.com
Demeter's contribution
Demeter foundation offered revenue-based financing, as to help create a sustainable social solution for an underserved public. The foundation also offers management coaching and strategic advice.
Additional information
SDG Goals
Quality Education
Decent work and Economic growth
Reduce inequalities
Ines Tavares, Project Manager, RESHAPE
Getting the Demeter's support was truly a turning point for us.
Reshape Ceramics has limited funding options for two reasons:
- The impact that we aim to have with this project is not measured in the short-term: an effective reintegration of someone that was incarcerated can take years and is not a straight journey.
- It is a social business, so it has revenues.
Because of these two factors we are either unattractive to funders (focused on short-term results) or non-eligible to grants (because we have revenues associated with the project).
The Demeter foundation gave us a perfect solution for this problem: they understand that complicated social+H2 issues take time to have a real impact and they promote financial self-sufficiency. Thanks to their contribution, we were able to continue this project after its first year – it was a second wind that continues to make us stronger and better.
With the Demeter’s contribution not only have we been able to increase the quality of our service towards the beneficiaries, but their results-based solution and coaching are allowing us to grow and better our performance so that we can achieve financial sustainability.