Symantec strives to create a positive impact both on a global and local scale through volunteering initiatives, grants, software donations, and by supporting employees in their personal volunteer and monetary contributions. With these tools in hand, Symantec teams all over the world support their communities in a variety of ways, and here in South Africa, our team has partnered with a local charity that does excellent work within our community.
Five years ago, the Nelson Mandela Foundation launched Mandela Day to commemorate the leader’s legendary impact and also as a call to action for others. Mandela Day, which is on July 18th – Nelson Mandela’s birthday – is considered a day to honor his legacy by volunteering and contributing to the community. Here in South Africa, our office gets involved in some capacity every year, and this year we decided to join forces with non-profit, Clean C, whose mission is “community upliftment through community involvement.” For Mandela Day, Symantec employees volunteered their time to paint a daycare in the township to clean and brighten it up.
That is when our partnership first began with Clean C. Mandela Day encourages people to “Take action. Inspire change. Make every day a Mandela day.” Because Clean C takes a multi-initiative approach to community development it offers many opportunities to align with different causes and in various ways. They seek to provide “multi inter-community upliftment and enrichment through education, skills development, sport participation, safety and security initiatives, environmental awareness all through community involvement and job creation.” This broad approach allows our employees to get involved in the issues that interest them most. After further discussion with Clean C, we identified additional opportunities for our team to get involved in charity events on an ongoing basis, and so far have arranged five different events this year from a beach clean-up day to student online safety training. We participated and planned numerous volunteer events to help uplift the Masibambane Creche Day Care in Joe Slovo Park. The day care receives $100 a month to feed 40 kids, all between 4 months to 4 years old. Due to the dire need for financial support, Clean C initiated the relationship.
In September, a team of Symantec employees spent the morning setting up shelves and repositioning a door frame, as well as providing lunch to the children. We visited the day care again in October and the team hung up hooks for the kids and provided a hygienic kit for each child. We provided toothbrushes, toothpaste as well as some much needed supplies for the crèche such as wet wipes, hand sanitizer, liquid hand soap and toilet paper.
On November 15th, employees from the sales group Team US, organized a charity event at Blouberg Beach. Symantec employees teamed up with underprivileged children and they all helped clean the beach. After, they played football and provided the children with hotdogs, drinks, snack packs and homemade cupcakes to enjoy! “To all who contributed with donations and most importantly your time, thank you so much! It was a big success and the looks on those children’s face were priceless!” said Mark Wade, Inside Product Sales Rep at Symantec.
The fourth charity event was held on November 21st at the Symantec office. Eighteen high school boys from Joe Slovo came into the office to learn about online safety. Three Symantec employees volunteered their time to teach the boys about online safety and about Symantec’s role in internet safety. They did an amazing job on the presentation and the kids were so engaged and actively listening! After the training, some more employees joined the boys in the canteen to play games.
For our next event in December, we are organizing a Christmas drive and a Symantec employee will dress as Santa to deliver the presents to the children at the daycare.
Many people have been keen to get involved and I’ve found that everyone really wants to help. It is so much fun! I love being able to bring a little bit of happiness into the lives of someone how is not as fortunate as we are. Especially spending time with the kids at the daycare warms my heart. The little kids have so much love and they are so happy just to get a hug or a kiss.
We would love more people to get involved in this wonderful collaboration and volunteering initiatives. As part of the partnership, Clean C has received a $5,000 grant to help support their work. Due to all the wonderful work that they are doing, they were awarded an additional $5,000 grant and will receive it in January! We have an internal meeting in January to plan our volunteer events for the new year around the Q4 theme – STEM education. Please contact me at pia_defreitas@symantec.com for more information and to volunteer in our upcoming activities.
Pia De Freitas is Symantec's Territory Sales Executive, South Africa