Heineken joins other donors for fire victims
ALEXANDRA – Beer giant lends a helping hand to November fire victims.
Beer giant Heineken was the latest benefactor of 500 families who were victims of a shack fire November last year in Greenville.
The fire destroyed their homes and property leaving them homeless just before the festive season.
The company’s donation on 26 January at Iphutheng Primary School followed donations from other corporates, charity organisations, government and individuals. It came in handy as they settle down to the year’s challenges.
In a statement, the company’s corporate affairs director, Millicent Maroga, said the donation of food hampers was an outreach project to improve their circumstances and done in partnership with the social media, not-for-profit justice movement #CountryDuty and community volunteers. “Through #RememberAlex, we aim to re-assure and remind the community of Alexandra that they are not forgotten.
” Our sustainability programme, Brewing A Better World, has ‘growing with communities’ as one of its key pillars,” Maroga said.
She added that it will not the be the last they work with the Alex community. “Our ambition is to devise a more sustainable programme to help communities who are devastated by fires.”
Volunteer Nompumelelo Mogobodi said, “Hopefully, fires and other hazards will be triggers for charitable support to the poor through flexible and emergency interventions to show that corporate citizenship also cares beyond selling their products,” adding that doing so will inspire hope.
She said corporates should assist communities they work in and benefit from through creative employment options from waste generated from their products. “In this case, Heineken could consider creating employment and small businesses through recycling to show they also care for environmental protection.”
Tumi Sole of the social media movement said they used social media as a strategic platform to promote an attitude of country duty, in this instance, through the # Remember Alex movement. “We urge South Africans to go beyond opening their hands to those in distress to also checking on them regularly until they recover from their challenges.”
He said they helped the fire victims to also acquire replacement identity documents and birth certificates from the Department of Home Affairs.
To donate to the victims through the movement, email: countryduty@protonmail.com
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