Fundraiser Image

Save a Cobbler's Dream in France

Goal€30,000 EUR
Raised€0 EUR

Fundraiser created byAhmed MAROUF

Save a Cobbler's Dream in France

My name is Kamel, and what I'm about to share isn't easy to say. But sometimes, honesty is the only currency left when everything else runs out.

I'm unemployed. In France today, that word carries a weight that is hard to describe to those who haven't lived it. Our country is going through one of its most difficult economic periods in decades. Inflation is crushing households. Finding stable work feels like chasing a shadow. Thousands of families — mine included — are navigating a system that feels increasingly indifferent to those who fall through the cracks. I wake up every morning fighting the fear that tomorrow will be harder than today. That the opportunities I worked my whole life toward are slipping further and further away.

But I refused to stop looking. And that's when I found Cordonnerie Thierry in Poissy, France.

Thierry is a craftsman in the truest sense of the word. For decades, he has repaired shoes, restored leather, and served his community with quiet dedication and unshakeable pride. He never chased fame or fortune — he just showed up, every single day, and did his work with his hands and his heart. Now, after a lifetime of that, he deserves to rest. He deserves to close the door one last time, hand over the keys, and walk into retirement knowing that what he built will survive him.

But he can't. Because no one has stepped up. And every day that passes without a successor, the risk grows that Cordonnerie Thierry simply closes forever — another small business swallowed by a world moving too fast to care.

When I walked past that shop, something shifted in me. I saw more than a business opportunity. I saw a mirror. A man who gave everything to something real, now waiting for someone to believe in it as much as he does. And I realized — that someone has to be me.

KLEAZY was born from that moment. It is my answer to unemployment, to uncertainty, to a France that is struggling to protect its craftsmen and its independent businesses. Taking over Cordonnerie Thierry is not just a project — it is my lifeline. It is how I rebuild, how I contribute, how I stop being a statistic and start being someone who creates something lasting. Not just for myself, but for Thierry, for the people of Poissy, and for every person who still believes that a good pair of shoes deserves to be repaired rather than thrown away.

France is a country that prides itself on craftsmanship, on heritage, on the dignity of honest work. But that dignity is under threat right now. Small shops are closing. Craftsmen are aging out with no one to replace them. And the people who want to step in — people like me — often lack the one thing that makes it possible: capital.

That is why I am here. Not to beg. Not to complain. But to ask you — honestly, humbly — to be part of something that matters.

Your donation will help me acquire Cordonnerie Thierry and give Thierry the retirement he has earned. It will keep a genuine craft alive in a community that needs it. It will give one unemployed man in France the chance to rebuild his life through hard work, passion, and purpose. And it will prove that across borders, across languages, across every difference that divides us — human solidarity is still real.

Every dollar you give is a stitch in something worth saving.

Please donate. Please share. Please believe — because right now, that belief means everything.

Thank you, with all my heart. 

Recent Donations

Updates

Prayer Requests

Click the Pray button to let the fundraiser owner know you are praying for them.

Fundraisers Near Me

GiveSendGo

The place where help and hope go hand-in-hand.

Border Curve