ORT SA honours Bidvest pioneer with lifetime membership
Praised for his tremendous contribution to improving education and his vision as a businessman, Brian Joffe was honoured with the 1880 Society Platinum and Lifetime Membership Award by ORT South Africa.
The educational institution honoured the renowned businessman and founder of Bidvest at a breakfast held at the Killarney Country Club in Houghton.
Jon Benjamin, chief operations officer of World ORT, heaped praise upon Joffe and Bidvest for the critical role played in improving the state of education in schools.
“Mr Joffe has touched and influenced many people with his vision and his commitment,” he said.
Darryl Weisz, chairman of ORT SA, echoed these sentiments and said the commitment and involvement from the likes of Joffe and Bidvest was of great help to his organisation.
“We decided to honour him because he’s not often recognised as one of South Africa’s biggest businessmen and he has always been generous enough to help us out,” he said.
After glowing praise from his peers and beneficiaries, Joffe took to the podium and thanked the organisation for the recognition and highlighted the role of education.
“For our country, there is only one solution to creating jobs and that is education,” he said.
He stressed his company’s role in empowering others through its involvement with other educational programmes in communities around South Africa.
“Education is one of the biggest ways to contribute meaningfully in the country…as a nation, we need to fix [the state of] our education if South Africa wants to come right,” he said.
Also present were beneficiaries of Bidvest and ORT SA’s education projects in Alexandra, who thanked the company and ORT for their contribution.
ORT SA has partnered with Bidvest in implementing educational projects in Alexandra. The partnership is aimed at improving teaching and learning of mathematics in primary schools.
