Age: 29
Education: Trained as a carpenter
Profession: Entrepreneur
Did you know? He learned his skills thanks to Emmaüs, an international charity community, in Lviv.
Sashko Horondi, founder of the Horondi backpack brand, says he did not choose to create backpacks. Rather, “the backpacks chose him.”
At the time, no one thought that this brand would be so successful. The road that brought Horondi into designing and selling his own backpacks and accessories started almost 30 years ago in his native Mukachevo, a city of 86,000 people located 770 kilometers southwest of Kyiv.
“At home, I was in a bad company,” he told the Kyiv Post.
At the age of 13, Horondi was part of a local gang initially involved in petty theft. He was caught by the police at 17, and was given a suspended sentence of two years for robbery.
“If you grow up on the streets in a certain criminal environment, you will not be able to leave it so easily,” he said. “At the time, it seemed to me that leaving home would be the only way out.”
That’s why Horondi decided to leave for Lviv, a city of 721,000 and the cultural capital of western Ukraine. “I got on the train and ran to Lviv, promising myself that I would never return and I’d be better off dying somewhere far away from everyone and all that. I didn’t even know if Lviv was a big city. It was just the end of the line.”
Horondi spent nights at the Lviv train station, rummaging in the dumpsters for something to eat. He tried to find items to sell. Still, even on the street, “I felt free,” he says.
Soon he found the Emmaus Home of Oselya in Lviv, part of an international charity that helps the homeless. He became the first resident of the Oselya social dormitory and learned to repair furniture. He served as administrator of the dorm for two years.
But it was not enough. He wanted to create something to enjoy, like sewing a backpack. “I did not succeed at first, and had no money to buy fabric, but I lived in a social dormitory, which had a shop where people gave them clothes they did not need. And from that I tried to sew something,” he said.
He sewed a few other items at the request of the head of Emmaüs Home, Olesya Sanotska, for a garage sale. “I sewed backpacks for that sale, and, in half an hour, I sold everything.”
He found his calling in life. He knows where the credit goes. Without the Emmaüs community, “neither I nor the Horondi brand would exist.”
The next step, he said, is to create Horondi goods for the home, as well as clothes and shoes too. Horondi also wants to create another Emmaüs Home somewhere. “I feel a responsibility to the people who live on the streets and are now in trouble. The least I can do is give those people a fishing rod and teach them to fish, as the saying goes,” he said.
Another saying sums up Horondi’s philosophy: “The most important thing is to dream, to travel, to love and to try to bring as little evil as possible to this world and other people’s lives. You reap what you sow,” he said.
