By: Natasha Archary

Last year H&M South Africa launched a Suitably Dressed Initiative to assist job seekers who couldn’t afford formal clothes for their interviews.
The retailer invited South Africans to donate their previously loved clothes which are still in good quality towards the Suitably Dressed Initiative.
In exchange H&M will give contributors a 15% off gift voucher from the store, which could be used towards their next H&M purchase.
The number of vouchers a person receives in return, depends on how many bags of clothing they donate towards the initiative.
To share an update on how successful the initiative has been to date, Miles Kubheka returns to Kaya Biz with Gugulethu Mfuphi.
The Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, Clothes to Good said he started the initiative after listening to the radio and heard a guy call in to share he was being ridiculed by his students for repeating his one outfit to his new lecturing job.
“Within 6-weeks we collected 29 tonnes of clothes. That’s over 72 500 items of clothing. So, South Africans came out and showed that they genuinely cared about our country’s future by understanding the plight of unemployed people.”
Harambee supports 3.8million work seekers, and Miles says that the success of H&M South Africa’s Suitably Dressed Initiative was so phenomenal that the brand is looking at ways to adopt the approach globally.
The collection drive ran in October last year.
Listen to the conversation on Kaya Biz:
H&M to assist job seekers who can’t afford formal clothes for their interviews
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