Corporate Social Investment

Soyisile is a no-fee government school in the heart of Khayelitsha (Cape Town).

Like most no-fee township schools, it is underfunded and overcrowded and they need all the financial support they can get from private funders. The school caters for scholars in Khayelitsha and surrounding areas.

Many of the children come from single-parent households or live with an extended family member. To alleviate some of the financial burdens on the sparsely resourced school, and to improve the overall learning experience and spirits of both the learners and educators, we have selected Soyisile as one of our core CSI beneficiaries. In recent years, we have replaced the aging and impractical classroom furniture with new desks and chairs, and provided the school with extramural equipment (sports, arts, and audio equipment). Every cent and minute saved as result of our contributions has improved the general mood in the school, allowing resources to be redirected to other needs.

Notwithstanding the noticeable difference in the children, education and parents, there is still a lot more that we can and will do for the school.

FLY is a non-profit organisation that provides mathematics tutoring to secondary school learners in underserved communities.

FLY offers a unique platform for young professionals to volunteer their time and expertise as tutors and mentors to empower less-privileged youths through education.

Tutor sessions are hosted at the JL Zwane community centre in Gugulethu (Cape Town) and in Alexandra Township (Johannesburg). These centralised locations allow FLY to draw students from many schools in the neighbouring townships.

The FLY program is focused on ensuring learners complete Grade 12, elect mathematics over mathematics literacy in grade 10, obtain a bachelor pass in Grade 12, attend a tertiary education institution, and ultimately qualify as a professional.

We have undertaken to support FLY financially on an annual basis.

FLY recently launched a bursary trust that will sponsor deserving students in their tertiary education. We were one of the anchor sponsors for FLY’s fund raising dinner for 2017, which raised a significant amount of money that will be used towards their operational costs and bursary programme.

The Durbanville Schools Foundation is a registered charitable trust whose mission is to improve the standard of education among 11 underprivileged primary schools in the Foundation. These schools are predominantly farm schools.

Like most rural schools, these schools are behind their city counterparts in many aspects. The Foundation caters for the farm children in the rural areas in the outlying areas of Durbanville, including the informal settlements along the way to Malmesbury, Paarl, and Stellenbosch.

When the Foundation was formed just over a decade ago, most rural children never reached matric (Grade 12), with some not even proceeding to secondary school (Grade 8 and upwards). The Foundation’s stated objective is “to increase the number of pupils that go on to matriculate from these Primary schools and to improve the standard of their matric passes”.

Through the efforts of the Foundation and its sponsors, these communities have improved dramatically, but there is a long way to go. The Foundation’s projects cover a range of areas close to the learners and their communities. Projects range from, but are not limited to, teachers’ compensation (governing body posts), classrooms and school facilities, infrastructure, bursaries, educational programmes and materials.

The objective of the Fund is to encourage investors to save for the tertiary education of any South African child from a low-income household.

This is accomplished through rewarding individuals on an annual basis who have saved through the Fund with a grant bonus of 25% of their invested amount, which is capped at R600 per beneficiary. Investors can save for any child even if the child is not their own, and there are no limits of how many children an investor can save for. Fundisa savings can be used at a NSFAS accredited public FET college or university. The money may only be used for tertiary educational purposes, otherwise the bonus portion will be forfeited.

We make an annual contribution to the Fund to enable the 25% bonus payments to the Fund’s beneficiaries. The bonus amounts are allocated to beneficiaries through participating Funds managed by various collective investment management companies.

The ASISA Foundation initiates and implements consumer financial literacy and education programmes that target South Africa’s most vulnerable groups.

The aim is to change behaviour through the transfer of knowledge and skills, thereby helping previously disadvantaged groups to manage their financial affairs more appropriately. The desired outcome is to reduce the vulnerability of these consumers by empowering them to make appropriate financial decisions throughout their life stages. This will lead to greater economic participation by the poor.