Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) host their annual MD’s Charity Golf Day at Copperleaf Golf Estate every year and LTM Energy was thrilled to be a part of their CSI Initiative by which all proceeds go to the Thusong Childrens Home.
Thusong has been the beneficiary of this annual fundraising event since CCBSA Managing Director Velaphi Ratshefola took the orphanage under his wing. Located at Mokwalla Township in the Free State town of Vredefort, Thusong was founded more than a decade ago by former teacher, Maria Mopeli, to provide for the community’s vulnerable children. It currently provides meals, homework support, skills development, health awareness, traditional values and counselling to 240 orphans between the ages of 6 and 20.
“CCBSA believes strongly in directing its corporate citizenship efforts towards positively impacting the communities we serve. When I first saw Thusong, I knew we had to help, and I challenged our employees and business partners to join in giving these children a better start in life,” he says. “As I knew they would, they responded magnificently and we were recently able to hand over a new centre to Ms Mopeli.”
Funds raised by the MD’s annual Charity Golf Day contributed to the building of the new centre and to other improvements. CCBSA employees have also made a substantial contribution. Through CCBSA’s Soul Ambassador programme, they have contributed toiletries and other goods to the centre and, through internal fund raising initiatives, have raised a total of R2.1 million to date. “Of course, Thusong is an ongoing project. Our next goal is to provide a facility in which orphans can be cared for full-time. I encourage all stakeholders in CCBSA—internal and external—to continue their sterling support for Thusong by participating in this year’s golf day,” says Mr Ratshefola. “I can promise them a good day’s golf on a spectacular course (the second to be designed by golfing legend Ernie Els), excellent food and drink, and great company.”
LTM has sponsored a few of these desktop computers to Coco-Cola for their Golf Day Awards evening and to Yenzani’s Children Home as this would give them free access to available educational material. The LTM group has a successful partnership with a company called Endless situated within the United States of America, we successfully distribute their desktop sized computers within South Africa. We are currently engaging contact with the Department of Education to offer them discounted rates for the use of our compact computer systems that only require an additional monitor to be purchased with the system and have up to a hundred free preloaded apps & LTM’s preloaded Green Curriculum on the device. LTM has decided to engage with Public Educational Departments to give back to the community and promote the use of technology within low-cost schools and areas as these computers are compact, reach computing prices never seen before and they are not often identified as computers so they are not targeted to be stolen, they are easily stored away if no formal school premise is used and can be used in areas with little to no internet available.
We wish to sing the praises of the team that joined us for the 4 ball at this event. These wonderful men from very different backgrounds joined us in celebrating these children and maximizing on the sponsorship opportunitues. It is this sort of community involvement which we think makes our CSI programme such a successful one. This kind of support is not something we take lightly and is very much appreciated by everyone connected with LTM Group of Companies.
From left to right
Jacob Maroga – Department of Public Works
Aneel Kallan – LTM Energy
Noel Lendis – Nestle South Africa
Kinesh Pather – AVACAP (PTY) LTD
