Matsavane Primary school in Bushbuckridge Mpumalanga was awarded with a fully-fledged library facility by SHOUT, an NGO founded by South African renowned musicians Danny K Koppel and Kabelo Mabelane on the 17th f May 2018. The philanthropic initiative that is supported by South Africa’s leading burger brand Steers, Network BBDO as well as the Breadline Africa, have seen tremendous success in the development of this project that aims to eradicate a serious socio-economic that many poverty-stricken communities. Child illiteracy in South Africa is already among one of the highest in the world and furthermore affects the quality of adult lives due to experiencing the lack of resources to assist in the development of literacy skills within childhood stages. “We know, however, that if we are to break the cycle of poverty, we need to educate the children of the poor.”, stated president Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of the nation address where he emphasized the importance of ensuring that this socio-economic issue is addressed to further assist in improving the outcome of basic education system nationally.
Rounda is a non-governmental regulatory system that is supported by a board of trustees of the Nikela trust that include the Cyril Ramaphosa foundation and the government, who also believe the importance of being involved actively to ensure that South African’s can assist in lightening the financial burdens NGO’s and charities have to face but consitently strive to alleviate socio- economic issues in various communities. Rounda is a platform that was established to enable brands, businesses and individuals to make a small financial contribution of as little as R1 to an array of NGO entities that include the likes of Choc House, CANSA, NSPCA, SA Red Cross and more in an actionable as well as impactful. “I am truly so humbled by the chance to once again be part of a very special program that aims towards nurturing young tummies and minds I which we already support but need a helping hand from our consumers in sustaining our continued support for these initiatives.” Says Adolf Fourie, Steers Marketing Executive. Rounda is a non- governmental initiative that was started by Dawie who had a Steers consumers are encouraged to make a R1 donation that will be split to contribute 30% to SHOUT, 30% to Lets Play and 40% to the Nikela Trust.
The alignment of the Rounda and the brand lies strongly in the fact that Steers saw the opportunity fitting to engage with the initiative in a manner that would continuously accommodate funding of the SHOUT libraries program that was first launched with a unique offering in the menu that enabled the sales which generated to raise one million Rand that was donated towards the construction of the libraries. “It’s important for us to undergo partnerships like this with brands such as Steers who share our values that focus on ensuring that underprivileged communities are taken care of consistently, most especially in sustaining the
SHOUT S.E.E.D Libraries program that was designed to create brand new fully equipped learning library mobile centers for schools that do not have access to this resource because we saw the success in the first launch of the initiative in Thembisa and Soshanguve last year. This year, the library in BushbuckRidge we will finally celebrate the arrival of the learning center, which will be followed by another ceremony Knysna later in the year.” says Kabelo Mabelane, Co-Founder of SHOUT.
In the speeches and choral performances delivered by the principal, teachers and representative learners carried a communication that expressed gratitude for the beautiful resource that was awarded to them to encourage a culture that supports early childhood literacy improvement within the current demographic of impoverished learners who have the bare minimum to succeed.”, exclaimed Maria, the Principal of Matsavane primary school in her speech during the ribbon cutting ceremony. “This platform really gives life to SHOUT on a sustainable basis that would help us build more libraries in more schools across the country because without the support from our partners and Steers in the S.E.E.D Libraries campaign, we would have never been able to create much needed mobile resources for our young minds.” states Danny K, co- founder of SHOUT.
