Tracey Chambers (South Africa)
Founder and CEO of The Clothing BankTracey is a Chartered Accountant with 25 years’ experience in the corporate and social sector. Before starting The Clothing Bank she worked for a large listed retailer as the Head of Financial Planning and Performance Management. In 2010, she founded The Clothing Bank, a non-profit organization which inspires, skills and supports unemployed South Africans to eradicate poverty in their families. They achieve this through three key projects; The Clothing Bank project partners with most of South Africa’s major retailers who donate their excess merchandise and this is used as the tool to empower unemployed mothers to start retail trading businesses. The Appliance Bank utilizes returned appliances from retailers to enable unemployed men to start businesses which repair and sell home appliances. The GROW with Educare Centres (ECD)project is pioneering a new social franchise model for quality early childhood education in South Africa. The projects currently support over 1000 business owners who made in excess of R44million ($3m) in profits in the last twelve months and 30 GROW schools which educate over 1100 children.
The Clothing Bank has won many prestigious awards which include:
- Ashoka Fellowship 2018
- Western Cape Premier Business Award in 2017 – Business of the Year and Social Entrepreneur of the Year
- Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2016 – an international award aligned to the World Economic Forum
- Western Cape Businessmen Women of the Year 2015