SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
The women eligible for this award are 30 or older and their businesses have survived the first 1 000 days. Their ventures are making a difference in their communities.
WHO: Lusanda Magwape COMPANY: Dream Factory Foundation WEBSITE: www. dreamfactoryfoundation.org
While working with under-resourced schools, Lusanda was confronted with the realities of SA’s youth – especially that of young women: poverty, lack of access to educational tools and unemployment. ‘I wanted to help so I started running motivational plays at schools, which evolved into musical roadshows that toured the Western Cape,’ she recalls.
But Lusanda realised that she needed to do much more to impact the lives of young
people. That’s why in 2011, she created the Dream
Factory Foundation, a nonprofit organisation (NPO) that offers educational tools and programmes to improve the outcomes of learners, and give unemployed youth digital and entrepreneurial skills.
Between 2015 and 2018, the NPO empowered and trained 6 381 young people – with more than 60 percent of them being women.
WHO: Luleka Mkuzo
COMPANY: Urglobal Mentoring Network WEBSITE: urglobal.co.za
Having grown up in a rural village between Flagstaff and Bizana in the Eastern Cape, Luleka Mkuzo understands all too well how isolated these areas are in terms of access to any form of higher education. ‘The world is advancing rapidly, and technology skills have become as important as breathing,’ she says.
With the Fourth Industrial
Revolution almost upon us, Luleka knew that if these communities couldn’t access skill-building institutions, the inequality gap would only grow.
In 2015, Urglobal Mentoring Network was born: a mobile computer training solution that utilises a school’s infrastructure to teach computer skills to students, teachers, and community leaders and members. ‘We hope to see digital centres built in rural communities throughout the country that will empower ordinary South Africans.’
WHO: Renshia Manuel COMPANY: GrowBox WEBSITE: www.growbox. strikingly.com
Having been a librarian for six years, Renshia Manuel suddenly found herself unemployed, and to put food on the table, she began growing veggies in her backyard. Two years later, she entered the YouthStartCT Entrepreneurial Challenge, which called on youth to submit ideas for a sustainable business. ‘My community of Hanover Park in Cape Town is rife with poverty and unemployment; I knew that vegetable gardening could be the key to helping other families like my own,’ she says.
Renshia won third place for her idea, and with her winnings launched GrowBox in 2016. The business promotes urban food gardens by supplying vegetable garden boxes to people who don’t have the space to grow veggies. For the past three years, GrowBox has also facilitated food gardening workshops in the Cape Flats that have benefitted over 530 people.
Sadly the nursery, which provided extra revenue, was vandalised, resulting in damages of more than R20 000. If Renshia wins, she plans to use her winnings to upgrade the nursery to meet her goal of helping 1 million-plus households.