Rayana Edwards, the South African who started a project to empower women to recycle saris into internationally-acclaimed fashion garments, has been named as a joint winner of this year’s Goldman Sachs and Fortune Global Women Leaders award.
The other winner was Emma Dicks, founder of CodeSpace Academy, a coding school.
Due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the prestigious awards were on Wednesday presented virtually online from Washington DC at the Fortune Most Powerful Summit.
The annual award is made possible through a partnership between the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women franchise, and is given each year to outstanding women from around the world who are working to empower others in their communities and countries. “The award empowers us to pay forward a job creation model that is functional and scalable with immediate results, especially now as the Covid-19 pandemic demands we rethink how we position and build forward in our new normal,” said Edwards, who established Sari for Change in 2014.
The award, a USD 25,000 grant towards further extending Sari For Change brand, will be used to train low-income communities through creative hubs at schools and other places of safety for women, Edwards said.
