The seven organisations which have been identified and at which staff will volunteer for the day, encompass children's, women's and environmental causes. These organisations include Forest Town School, MC Kharbai School for the Deaf, Ethembeni Children's Home, Stop Hunger Now SA, Mould. Empower. Serve (MES), People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) and a public park in Alexandra (facilitated by Johannesburg City Parks).
Forest Town School is a special-needs school that caters for learners with varied challenges. Its WEP@Work programme works with youths aged between 16-18 and focuses on their skills development, to assist them in entering the workforce. These skills are developed through a number of channels, including the school's coffee shop, bakery and salon. The money raised through these platforms is used to provide a monthly stipend for the students.
L'Oréal staff will run the coffee shop, bakery and salon for the day, with all money raised going directly to the school. Aside from those employees working at the school on the day, other L'Oréal staff are being encouraged to stop in and grab lunch prepared by their colleagues or enjoy a haircut at minimal cost to help boost the fund-raising efforts further.
Also a special-needs school, MC Kharbai School for the Deaf is located in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, and caters to deaf, hard of hearing and moderately challenged learners from the surrounding disadvantaged areas of Vlakfontein, Orange Farm, Kliptown, Eldorado Park, Ennerdale, Lawley and Soweto.
The school's Grade 11 syllabus includes a hairdressing and beauty class, where learners are taught basic hairdressing and beauty skills, such as hygiene, washing, treating and colouring hair, and blow drying.
On Citizen Day, the SoftSheen Carson hairdressing team will go to the school and share with learners valuable hairdressing skills and theoretical and practical knowledge to better position them to successfully enter the workforce in future.
The Ethembeni Children's Home in Doornfontein is an initiative of the Salvation Army. It cares for up to 60 children, from birth to three years, that have been removed from abusive households or abandoned due to being infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. This special place provides love and care for these children, as well as mental and emotional stimulation while working towards their adoption or fostering into a loving family environment.
The Green Room, which is a bedroom for three- and four-month-old babies, is in desperate need of a revamp. A charitable local contractor has donated paint and a new carpet for the room. L'Oréal volunteers will repaint the room and replace the carpet, giving these children a cosy and nurturing place to sleep. This project follows on from the successful Citizen Day project at the home last year, in which the team made over the facility's dining room.
Staff from L'Oréal's Midrand manufacturing plant as well as all M4 and Centurion staff, will extend the day's focus on South Africa's children when they dedicate their time to help Stop Hunger Now SA.
A hunger relief organisation that provides food for the country's destitute people, Stop Hunger Now SA concentrates a large part of its efforts on children, where it works with Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres to ensure at least one nutritional meal per learner per day. L'Oréal staff will increase the number of meals available to learners by helping to pack 40,000 meals for those ECD centres supported by the programme.
Johannesburg's destitute people will be further assisted through the MES Citizen Day project. MES - Mould. Empower. Serve - is a non-profit organisation dedicated to assisting the city's homeless people through, among other things, its soup kitchen, where it aims to provide at least one meal per day to the homeless.
Not only will L'Oréal staff lend a helping hand in the soup kitchen, but they will also play a soccer game with the homeless people who are at the kitchen on that day.
People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) is a feminist women's rights organisation that provides services and engages in advocacy in order to ensure the realisation of women's rights, thereby improving women's quality of life. Most of the women who seek shelter and refuge at POWA have no formal education or work experience, and were heavily dependent on their spouses or partners for financial support.
L'Oréal has organised a comprehensive skills-development workshop that will equip 30 women from POWA with the skills they need to regain their confidence and integrity. This will hopefully help further their chances of successfully finding employment, so they may be financially secure and independent. The workshop will cover compiling a CV, grooming tips, interviewing skills, mock interviews and facilitating the event.
City Parks focuses on the development, maintenance and conservation of public, open spaces and the natural environment as well as the greening of the City of Johannesburg. L'Oréal staff will do their bit for the community of Alexandra by cleaning up the local Guinea Bassua park and giving its benches and swings a new lease on life with a new coat of paint.
L'Oréal South Africa MD, Bertrand de Laleu, says the diversity of the projects selected reflects the company's commitment to giving back to all sectors of society, on various levels: "The causes we're supporting this year are drawn from across the L'Oréal Group's four charity focus areas, namely environment, diversity, generous beauty and education in science. This allows us to make a contribution to different disadvantaged groups in South Africa, and as such to have a wider impact in our communities."
For more information, go to www.loreal.com.
