Mantua Sewing Studio is providing a safe space for women from migrant and refugee backgrounds to work and connect with the local community, to reduce social isolation and build confidence.
After working in the Logan community for many years, co-founders Mady Taue and Kim Rollason-Nokes noticed the hardships that many of these women faced in gaining long-term, stable employment despite having amazing sewing skills.
“We had the idea to create a social enterprise that provides local, ethical and high quality manufacturing services to Australian clothing labels by drawing on the sewing expertise of women from migrant and refugee backgrounds,” Mady says.
“We also wanted Mantua Sewing Studio to allow for meaningful and empowering training and employment pathways for women from refugee and migrant backgrounds, while meeting the needs of ethical local clothing labels who want to manufacture locally.
“Manufacturing locally and ethically allows us to reduce labels’ impact on the environment, while creating employment for women in the local community. It’s a win-win situation.”
Their rapid scale-up has been both their biggest challenge and greatest highlight.
“Mantua was just an idea that we decided to pursue by being apart of the Impact Boom Accelerator Program at the start of 2019 and now we are moving into a commercial workshop space,” Mady says.
"We are essentially building a plane while flying it."
The Impact Boom Accelerator Program and the Office of the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur have allowed Mady and Kim to make connections that have helped the business grow in many ways.
“Through Impact Boom, we met Luke Terry from Whitebox Enterprises, who generously offered us some commercial space, connections and dollar matching for our crowdfunding campaign,” Mady says.
“Through Whitebox we were also introduced to MinterEllison lawyers who are helping us set up as a charity and with trademarking, all pro bono.
“I was also lucky enough to meet James from Outland Denim at a networking event - F Up Night - held at the Office of the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur and he has loaned us two shipping containers full of sewing machinery and equipment.”
The money they have raised through crowdfunding and a $1000 grant given to them from BEMAC (Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre) has also helped them in many ways.
“We’ve moved our loaned equipment from the top of Mt Tamborine to our workshop at Mt Gravatt TAFE, paid to service the machines and have rolled out our first in-house training program for the women,” Mady says.
“We are currently working with five labels with three more waiting to start once we have our ladies trained and ready to go.”
