Tracey Gilmore

Tracey Gilmore is the Co Founder of The Clothing Bank, her life’s passion has been to participate fully, be present and available to help South Africa build an inclusive society that encourages equal access to opportunities and financial freedom for all. She is an ideas person and have started various small businesses with varied success. 7 years ago her business partner Tracey Chambers and she founded The Clothing Bank. She had been working with impoverished women and felt frustrated by her lack of impact. The idea for TCB was conceptualised after Tracey and her had a conversation about how much excess “waste”stock there is to be found within the retail supply chain and how they could use this stock as the tool to teach unemployed women how to run small trading businesses. Since inception they have replicated our model in five cities across South Africa. These hubs have the capacity to train and support 800 women a year processing in excess of 130 000 items a month between them. They have trained 1600 women in business, finance and life skills, who have collectively generated in excess of R64 million worth of profits in their small businesses. she admire the pursuit of knowledge for professional or personal development. Lifelong learning is the key to staying relevant, it encourages social inclusion and active citizenship. Over the past few years she had learned an incredible amount about what it takes to create eco systems that facilitate change. She is fiercely passionate about what she does and have further ambitions to create relevant accessible opportunities that support economic inclusion.