Germiston’s Leeuwpoort Primary School, located in Driehoek, was visited by Edcon and the South African Red Cross Society’s Germiston branch, on Tuesday.
A team of employees from Edcon, one of South Africa’s largest non-food retailers, donated 600 pairs of school shoes to the children at the local school.
“This is the final leg of our Mandela Day celebration,” said Elelwane Pahlana, group transformation executive at Edcon.
“This initiative began on July 17 where these shoes were collected at a Mandela Day event held at the Edcon offices in Edgardale, Johannesburg, when staff members, including top management, paired school shoes.
“The shoes are part of the surplus stock that Edcon has each year, from the different shops, and some of them are adult shoes, men’s shoes and so forth.
“We felt that it is always a time consuming exercise to just bring it to the school and just have them sort them out, so as part of our employee volunteerism programme the staff sorted out the shoes in celebration of Mandela at the event.”
Pahlana also told the GCN that sorting out the shoes took roughly six hours.
“We took to the parking lot and converted it into a make-shift work space as tables upon tables of unmatched shoes lay waiting to be paired,” she said.
“Groups of ten employees took turns in spending their allotted 67 minutes to pair the shoes from 9am to 3pm.
“We asked the school for each child’s name and their shoes size; the children’s names were put on the packages.”
An additional 300 pairs were bought by employees as the other 300 were donated from the surplus stock.
“The additional shoes were bought from a pop-up store that was set up at the Edcon head office to ensure that every child at the school receives a brand new pair,” explained Pahlana.
“We work closely with the Red Cross and they identified the school for us.”
“This is a wonderful initiative, it really is great when people think of children,” said Leeuwpoort Primary School’s principal, Zoe Bolton.
“I believe society should try and help our children.”
The children were thrilled to receive their new school shoes and they were also each given a pencil case.
After the handover, the children enjoyed their well-prepared food parcels which were given to them by Edcon.
“We have an existing relationship with Edcon and we also helped with the sorting of the shoes,” said South African Red Cross Society Germiston’s manager, Barbara Jensen.
You might also be interested in:
FCS members celebrate Mandela Day
