Two Traceys teamed up to create threads of hope in South Africa for unemployed mothers. Instead of a hand-out, they’re offering a hand-up in the fashion world.
South Africa (21 July, 2023)— Being unemployed with a family to look after is a lot like having to drive across the country with the fuel gauge dangerously close to empty. The car could completely stop at any moment and there’s no sign of a petrol station anywhere. Yet, people keep telling you to simply fill up. How?
Then as if waking up from a fever dream, you come across a stranger who lends you some fuel to keep going and better yet, offers to teach you how to make your own. Just like that, the road ahead doesn’t look quite so long or lonely.
This is the premise of two Tracey’s mission—Taking Care of Business (TCB). Except the proverbial fuel is entrepreneurial resources and the determined driver is an unemployed mother. And as an added bonus, the road ahead leads to a better planet too.
Tracey Chambers and Tracey Gilmore started TBC over ten years ago and primarily serve unemployed mothers.
“We have focussed our efforts on working with unemployed mothers as statistics suggest that 68% of South African women with children under the age of two are single (never married and not living with a partner) and 50% of fathers provide no financial or emotional support for their children. Many children born to single mothers are living in dire poverty,” share the duo.
Reselling, Repairing, Remaking and Recreating Hope
Their nonprofit enterprise has three development programmes: Resell, Repair and Remake. All encompass a sustainable approach to fashion and a way out of poverty in a single, hopeful thread.
Take their Resell programme where unemployed mothers can transform into clothing traders with loads of stock thanks to the programme’s donations of excess clothing from the retail sector. Fashion waste gets reduced and so does the possibility of poverty for a family.
Or, their Enterprise Development Programme, which happens when TCB selects blossoming entrepreneurs and nurtures them even further to become small business owners.
What Inspired TBC?
The Traceys share:
“In South Africa, the unemployed struggle to access start-up capital, stock and business resources at a fair and affordable price, leaving them on the sidelines of economic activity. Without access to a proven, sustainable business model and the correct skills to manage their business requirements and finances, the risk of starting a new business is high.
The Traceys add:
“We knew from our experience that there were high volumes of fashion waste in the retail sector and when we brought these two challenges together we found a new opportunity: small business creation in the circular economy!”
Why do initiatives like this matter? Because they’re the glimmer of hope amid unemployment statistics, the hand-up over a hand-out and the kind stranger on a road that’s about to become a lot less lonely thanks to the Traceys.
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