Robin Hood Foundation founder Cindy Norcott helps KZN communities

An accomplished entrepreneur, published author, busy motivational speaker and business coach and the founder of The Robin Hood Foundation, Cindy Norcott’s secret to success is a simple one.

“I love people,” Norcott says. “And I really believe that if you are in the business of just loving people and building relationships with no intention to gain anything – just to be there and help – then you will succeed in life, no matter what.”

Norcott has humble roots. Her father was in sales and her mother was a housewife but now works with Norcott. The second of three girls, she was born in East London, Eastern Cape but raised in Pinetown, west of Durban, from the age of 11.

She was always a driven child and put herself through a social science degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal by working multiple jobs at a time – including as a waitress at a local Spur, at a fabric store, doing promotions and market research.

She started Pro Appointments in 1994, with little more than a dream.

“I started it out of my parents’ spare room in Pinetown,” she says.

Over the past 27 years, though, it has grown into one of the leading recruitment agencies in Durban, won several awards and spawned a sister company, Pro Talent.

Norcott’s business success has afforded her a great deal of privilege – something she’s the first to acknowledge – and she’s passionate about sharing it. This was why she was inspired to start The Robin Hood Foundation.

A wife and mother to two daughters, Norcott was dressing her youngest – then just six weeks old – when she started thinking about just how many clothes she had.

“She was in a little newborn outfit and as I was changing her I thought: she’s outgrown this whole outfit. And I looked and I counted and I had 84 babygrows for this child,” she said.

“And I thought I could clothe 10 poor babies for a year, shame on me.”

The following day, she got in touch with a friend of hers and together they came up with the concept of a “baby shower in a bag” for mothers in need and babies.

“We have friends who have so much and we thought we can take from the rich and give to the poor,” she said.

When she started visiting local hospitals to hand the bags out, she saw first-hand just how desperate some situations were.

“Moms would arrive and have their babies and then they’d leave, sometimes with the baby wrapped in a newspaper or a towel or a jersey,” she said.

In the 16 and half years since they first started, Norcott and her team at the Robin Hood Foundation – comprising just one permanent staff member and a board of four volunteers – have branched out to support a wide range of communities in need.

They have built a total of three creches – “beautiful state-of-the-art creches that I would want my child to go to”, Norcott says – in Hammarsdale, Ntshongweni and Shongweni; revamped a local primary school; kitted out a number of local special needs schools with specialist equipment and built a house for an elderly woman whose plight they picked up in a local newspaper.

They also host annual events and initiatives for special needs schools and old-age homes, including “Bless a Granny”, through which they arrange thousands of cards and gifts for old-age home residents around Durban.

Norcott says they “go where the need is”.

Hunger is an issue especially close to her heart.

“I’ve always had this thing about feeding people,” she says. “It worries me that people don’t have food. It upsets me so much that we live in a country where we have so much privilege and yet there are people – within two kilometres of where we live – who are starving.”

Last year, when the Covid pandemic struck, Norcott and her team started receiving an influx of calls from people who were struggling to put food on the table.

“So we started doing humanitarian aid relief,” she said.

This year, they also distributed more than 48 tons of food to those affected by the violent unrest in KwaZulu-Natal last month and the subsequent food shortages.

Norcott believes in the power of business in South Africa.

“I’m an entrepreneur at heart, business is in my blood. Most entrepreneurs in this country want to make a difference, they’ve got good hearts. They care about their staff, they care about the community,” she says.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za