If you are feeling depressed or cynical about life, get hold of a copy of Old Mutual’s annual brochure on its Staff Community Builder Programme, writes Fiona Macleod.
Titled People with a passion … to give, to care, to share, it is an uplifting glimpse into how ordinary people can make a big difference.
The Staff Community Builder Programme is one of three projects run by the Old Mutual Staff Volunteer Programme. It encourages staff to share their skills and expertise with outside communities. Staff apply for financial assistance for these projects of up to R20 000.
Projects that have received support range from community and economic development to HIV/Aids, health and welfare, education, arts and youth development. There are numerous projects in all nine provinces.
In the Eastern Cape, for instance, employee Nontando Gaba made contact with the Izikolethu Farming Project after she inherited land from her father. People from the project invited her to learn from their activities, but it turned into a two-way relationship as Gaba shared her own skills and organised protective clothing items for the group.
She applied to the Staff Community Builder Programme for a donation for the group, which was used to fence off their vegetable gardens. The Izikolethu Farming Project gardens help feed three communities in one of the country’s most poverty-stricken provinces, and the group trains emerging farmers.
In Gauteng, Moses Mthombeni decided to help street children in the Tembisa and Kempton Park area by getting them involved in creative activities through the Majakathata Cultural Group.
Mthombeni is involved in fund-raising for the group, writing scripts and helping out wherever he is needed. The donation he arranged through Old Mutual will fund lighting equipment and props for a play on HIV/Aids awareness.
‘These children are future parents and the leaders of tomorrow,” Mthombeni says. ‘One of them may even become the president of the country.”
One employee who inspired her colleagues and appears to have encapsulated the spirit of the community builder programme was Anna Snyders, who died of leukemia on December 25 last year.
Even during her illness, Snyders worked as a volunteer at a Christian centre that helps disadvantaged communities in Eldorado Park, Kliptown, Slovo Park and Bush Koppies in Gauteng. Through her application to Old Mutual, the centre was able to buy sewing machines used to train unemployed women.
‘For three days a week — Wednesdays and Thursdays after work, and Saturdays — Anna rolled up her sleeves and helped in any way she could at Christ is the Answer Miracle Centre,” writes Old Mutual MD Roddy Sparks in the annual publication. ‘Supporting HIV-positive people, cooking for those in drug rehabilitation, finding off-cut material for their sewing school students, seeking sponsorships, sometimes giving the clothes she was wearing to the abused women who would knock on the door.
‘Even after being diagnosed with leukemia, she kept up her volunteer work. On the day of [the centre’s] day-care graduation ceremony, she booked herself out of hospital for a few hours to be able to attend.”
Snyders’s story may be one of the most poignant in the publication, but it is by no means isolated. Put together like this, these community builders prove just how much impact positive individuals can have on society if they are given the right incentives and assistance.