Vulnerable women, South Africa
Taking Care of Business uplifts vulnerable women from the townships of South Africa, providing them with mentoring, training and life and business skills so that they can get onto their own two feet. Taking Care of Business receives ‘waste’ stock from fast fashion organisations, training women to style and improve them and then they re-sell those goods in their local communities. They also train men on repairing and reselling faulty white goods.
At 54, Theodora Ntombi Makroti is living proof that dreams can be delayed — but never destroyed. When COVID shut down her thriving events business overnight, she refused to give up. She dusted off the Singer sewing machine her father once bought her and began again — sewing masks, creating décor, and rebuilding from whatever she had in her hands.
Joining the TCB Remake Programme reignited something deeper. She learned pattern-making, began designing her own signature patchwork pieces, and built a growing dress hire business so young women in her community could feel beautiful on their biggest days.
Today, she runs multiple ventures — events hire, dress hire, and fashion design — with her sights set on the film industry.
Open-minded. Creative. Focused.
And she’s only just getting started.
