Organisation of fire fighters goes beyond call of duty
HOUGHTON – The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed a strengthening of partnership with an organisation which not only fights fires but alleviates unemployed among youth.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) and Working on Fire (WoF) have agreed to strengthen stakeholder partnership. The move was taken as part of celebrating and commemorating the legacy of the country’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela.
As part of celebrating and commemorating the 30th anniversary of the release of Mandela from prison, Wof managing director Trevor Abrahams handed a framed collage of the Wof newsletter to the director of archives and research Razia Saleh at the foundation’s offices in Houghton on 5 March. With the passing of Madiba in 2013, Wof published a commemorative newsletter in his memory and framed it. Abrahams showed pictures of him with Mandela accompanying children to the United Nations.
In his introductory remarks, Abrahams gave the history of Wof since its inception in 2003 and said the programme has touched and changed lives. “We are a government-funded organisation and we have been going for seventeen years.
“We target the unemployed youth, the unskilled youths and train them as firefighters and we deploy them across the country. We have about 5 000 participants. It is a successful government-funded Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) and we develop our youth.”
He added that their management is mostly women, and 60 per cent of the management are former firefighters. The managing director said it’s a success story of government and private partnership of addressing poverty and unemployment.
Abrahams said most of their firefighters exit the programme into the police, defence force, conservation agencies, municipalities and airports. He said, “It’s a means of taking people out of a state of poverty and unemployment. One of the key programmes for us is Nelson Mandela Day on 18 July. It is part of our critical calendar days as it is with many other organisations. It allows young people to engage in their communities, whether they are serving at their local crèche or old age home, taking the message of that particular day we celebrate internationally.”
Saleh said, “We are glad to see these photos of Madiba that are different to what we have and glad to be forming a partnership with the organisation because the work that you do (poverty alleviation and job creation) is valuable including fighting fires, especially during the dry season.”
Some of the pictures are of Mandela at his first International Labour Organisation Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1990 as well as his visit to the late Oliver Tambo in Sweden.
After the symbolic handover ceremony, the Wof team was treated to a tour of the Nelson Mandela Foundation to see some of the archive’s memorabilia.
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