South African feminist and writer Chanté Moos wrote an article about issues facing South African women. Among the problems she listed was how South African women are most likely to be unemployed or underpaid even though they contribute to almost 50% of the GDP. According to Moos, South African women are breadwinners who are without opportunities that will lead them to thrive.
AMAZI founders Divya Vasant and Lisa Mgcotyelwa created a social impact brand for women intending to create a world and environment where women can thrive economically. AMAZI gives women the opportunity to participate in the South African economy, to be seen, heard, and present. This is all through the AMAZI academy.
Says Co-Founder and COO at AMAZI, Lisa Mgcotelwa, “The AMAZI Academy creates opportunities to include marginalized women of colour in South Africa economically. Our mission is to address the lack of access to marketable skills and earning opportunities that keep women economically excluded. We do this by creating a holistic skills development program that is possible because our loyal customers create impact by choosing AMAZI to meet their self-care needs. The academy creates access to skills development and earning opportunities for women who simply need a hand up. Not only does it offer vocational training, but it also includes personal development through soft skill programs. These mentorship and coaching programs help women transform their lives into economically active women in the economy”.
Many of the women are now a part of the AMAZI Tribe, working and thriving to support their families, but were once in challenging situations they didn’t know how to navigate.
*Ella Hlongwane is one of the many success stories of the academy. She was on the edge of giving up. Life hadn’t been easy for her. At one point she was unemployed with children to feed and no support. She felt alone. While commuting one day, she heard another woman speaking about AMAZI and an upcoming open day. She immediately knew that this would be her second chance in life. Today she is working and thriving. She earns enough to support herself and her children. Her children now have prospects,” narrates Elsa Pallett, Head of Marketing at AMAZI
To date, AMAZI has created access to digital life skills for nearly 4500 young women across the country. They have trained 600 young, unemployed women in accredited beauty skills, of which 450 remain economically active.
The social impact brand plans to empower another 1600 marginalized women with accredited skills in the next five years and create 1200 apprenticeship opportunities to transition women into the beauty industry. AMAZI also plans to create another 1200 earning opportunities for women to progress their careers in the beauty industry. This will bring the total number of women we are looking to positively impact over the next five years to just under 3000.
As a consumer, you can contribute to the work that AMAZI is doing.
“At AMAZI, we believe that women can be inventors and enablers for each other by understanding the power of every Rand they spend and where they spend it. By choosing to consume your self-care needs with AMAZI, you become a conscious investor in developing opportunities for economically excluded women of colour in South Africa. Whether enjoying an hour of self-care to get their nails done or purchasing AMAZI Beauty’s African-sourced & produced products designed to nurture the skin’s natural intelligence, your Rands create CHANGE at AMAZI. Our impact framework, which is called, Rands & Change is a matched funding system that extends the value of your spending on self-care and invests it alongside our funders to change women’s lives,” adds Elsa.
As we celebrate Women’s Day, Co-Founder Diya Vasant shared her message for this year’s commemoration, “We struggle with the idea that as a country, we wait for August to show how we are championing women. Women’s voices that we create the space for this month should have a platform outside this month. The women-owned businesses we support and collaborate with should be consistently part of our purchasing decisions and supply chains all year. The women-founded start-ups that we invest in and showcase this month should be the outcome of growing pipelines of women founders all year round. The fight against the endemic violence against women should be a daily fight, not confined to a set of days. The way we celebrate women & recognize the challenge of being a woman in South Africa today should be a way of being that’s baked into our everyday lives. Women’s month represents how much more work we need to do as a society to make women’s rights to equal lives a way of life, not just for a month”.
*Name has been changed to protect their identity
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