Mandela Day was a special occasion for Libstar’s Cecil Vinegar Works this year. For the first time, employees took initiative to conceptualise and implement a special project to ‘give back’ to the homeless in the vicinity of their premises.
Wynand Louw, their GM, tells the story.
“I attended a session of Free To Grow’s WorkQ® programme with one of our General Workers, Elethu Ralarala. His openness and engagement impressed me. Due to our interactions and the impact of WorkQ®, he approached me two weeks before Mandela Day. He asked if the business was running any initiatives, and if not, he wanted to do something on behalf of the business.
One of Elethu’s responsibilities is removing and sorting recyclable materials for our waste removal company. He suggested that he takes the waste to a recycling company himself for the week so that revenue can be used to fund a ‘give back initiative’.
I was extremely inspired by this interaction.
We immediately set out to put together a small team of employees. The initiative selected was to provide 150 warm lunch packs to the homeless in the Somerset West and Strand area.
It was decided that whatever could not be funded by Elethu’s initiative would be funded by the business.
On Mandela Day we set out as a team and handed out 150 lunch packs to the homeless. In fact, there was much interest from our people that we could not accommodate everyone.
This has been a fantastic corporate social initiative born out of WorkQ® and the initiative of an engaged staff member that will become an annual tradition.”