A pop-up carousel in Hyde Corner to Save the children

A magical, skincare-themed pop-up installation adorned the Woolworths Food in Hyde Park Corner, towards raising awareness of the work done by the Save the Children organisation in South Africa.

As marketing and digital executive for Clarins South Africa, Bronwen Oliver expounded on how the skincare brand has assisted the organisation for children to provide over 82 500 meals across South Africa, train 94 facilitators and principals on healthy nutrition, established 16 sustainable vegetable gardens, and instal tanks capable of holding 1 000 litres.

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“I felt it would be such a beautiful opportunity to give awareness about this initiative,” Oliver said at the event on June 25. “It’s one part fun because we’ve got this incredible carousel made for us to bring Clarins into this environment. We’re also bringing awareness around what we do with Save the Children, and the incredible work that the organisation does.”

Save the Children South Africa CEO Gugu Xaba lauded how early childhood development (ECD) centres have gardens, seeds, security, and developmental tools courtesy of Clarins’ annual contribution of R500 000 in donations.

“Remember, keeping a garden is not an easy task, so teaching educators, facilitators and parent how to care for gardens is necessary,” Xaba reflected. “Some ECD centres are even distributing because they’ve got so much food. They’ve got enough food for their centre, and they’re able to share within their communities.”

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Xaba also spoke about how, with the aid from Clarins, Save the Children is empowered to go into these centres to teach the children, the facilitators, and the parents how to care for, talk to, motivate, and encourage children: and not break them down abusively. She also talked about how one in three children in South Africa are sexually, physically, and emotionally abused – with emotional abuse cases even growing; and how her organisation is empowered through such campaigns to offer positive outcomes.

“We make them aware, and we empower them to be able to report when something untoward is happening so that we can provide them with care,” said Xaba. “We’ve got what we call positive parenting, and positive discipline because there are times when children need to be disciplined, but it needs to be positive, and it needs to be developmental. These are some of the things that we work with Clarins on in our centres.”

Isabel Martins, who is the CEO of Clarins in South Africa shared how important it became for her to work with a South African organisation when she joined the brand three years ago.

“We were looking to find a charity where we could craft a positive impact in South Africa, and that’s when we started working with Save The Children in 2020,” Martins said. “Clarins Global has partnered with children’s charities all over the world, and has funded over 41 million meals over the world. Those charities are not all implemented in South Africa. I thought it didn’t make any sense for us to be helping children who aren’t based in South Africa – because we already have so much poverty here.”

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