The Sara Blakely Foundation

 

Sara feels grateful to be a woman in America who was given the opportunity to achieve her dream. She wants women everywhere to have the same opportunity. For all the women who feel as grateful, and for all the men who see the global potential of women, The Sara Blakely Foundation is an opportunity to truly make an impact on families, villages, and nations. The Sara Blakely Foundation is dedicated to helping women globally and locally through education and entrepreneurship. By finding the future female entrepreneurs and leaders of the world and giving them the “leg-up” they need to succeed, the whole world will benefit.

 

Using her resourceful entrepreneurial approach, Sara is devoted to running her foundation as effectively and efficiently as possible, making the absolute best use of donations and her own money to strategically help women. She has pledged a portion of all SPANX and ASSETS sales directly to The Sara Blakely Foundation.

 

The Sara Blakely Foundation’s first project is in partnership with Virgin Unite helping CIDA City Campus in South Africa. When Sara traveled with Sir Richard Branson she had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel. This meeting had a tremendous impact on Sara. Both Nelson Mandela's passion for his country and the dire need for help inspired her to focus some initial attention on women in South Africa. She also met Taddy Blecher, an amazing entrepreneur from Johannesburg who started CIDA, the first free university in South Africa, from scratch. After visiting the school several times, Sara decided that all ticket donations for the first “Give a Damn” VIP Dinner will go towards scholarships for young women to attend CIDA.

 

The Sara Blakely Foundation will be able to immediately contribute by providing entrepreneurial training for women and awarding seed money in the form of grants to aspiring entrepreneurs with viable business plans. The program will be called Women On The Move.

 

Sara used her lucky red backpack to get through college, launch her company Spanx (she presented her first prototype to the Neiman Marcus buyer out of her red backpack), and survive all 13 episodes of the Rebel Billionaire where she won $750,000 to start the foundation.  Now Sara wants to pass it on…Sara would like to pass on the "lucky red backpack" to women as a symbol of starting small, thinking big, and remaining true to yourself. Each woman who receives a grant from The Sara Blakely Foundation will also receive their very own “lucky red backpack”…which Sara believes is almost as important as the funding.