VenFin’s three levels of corporate responsibility were mentioned earlier and its obligation to shareholders was dealt with under Corporate Governance. In this section its responsibilities towards the community (to be a good citizen in gratitude for the goodwill received from the public) and to staff (to ensure that their work remains a meaningful and rewarding experience) receive attention.

COMMUNITY SERVICE

As far as its business and its community service programme are concerned, the Company’s viewpoint is to make a meaningful contribution and to add value to all stakeholders. Donations are usually made over a term to provide beneficiaries with a measure of security and are not spread over such a broad area that the extent and effect become negligible.

In terms of this approach, the Company currently supports the following initiatives:

Entrepreneurship and training
In recent years VenFin has made a substantial investment which is held in trust for two notable educational and job creating projects: the SA College for Tourism at Graaff-Reinet and the Southern African Wildlife College near the border of the Kruger National Park.

SA College for Tourism – at this college in Graaff-Reinet specifically black women from previously disadvantaged communities are trained for the hospitality industry. The training forms part of the Peace Parks Foundation’s (PPF) strategy for transnational parks.

In 2003, a total of 27 students, among whom two came from Lesotho and one from Botswana, received training in the most important facets of the hospitality industry: culinary arts; food and beverage studies; room and front-of-house services as well as management and communications skills and computer literacy.

Of the 2004 enrolment of 30 students, 20 came from the following neighbouring states: Botswana (2), Lesotho (2), Malawi (4), Mozambique (4), Zambia (4), Swaziland (2) and Zimbabwe (2).This is a true reflection not only of the success of the PPF’s transnational park strategy but also of the international status that the College for Tourism has achieved during its relatively short history.

Southern African Wildlife College – a total of 44 students, all employed by conservation organisations in Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, attended diploma and certificate courses at the College during the past year.

For the first time a midyear break was implemented to allow students to visit their families. This arrangement proved to be a great success. In the past it was noticed that the morale and motivation of the students declined during the last months of the course.

SciMathUS – after a trial period of three years, VenFin decided to provide further assistance to this project of the Institute for Mathematical and Science Teaching at the University of Stellenbosch, the aim of which is to provide students from formerly disadvantaged communities the opportunity to improve their efficiency in mathematics and science or accountancy during a postmatric year in order to gain access to tertiary education.

The success of the project, now in its third year, has been proved beyond any doubt. At the end of last year all the participants in the programme wrote the final exam in the higher grade and achieved a 100% pass rate, with 13 distinctions. As compared to their 2002 matric results, the students improved their average maths results by 38%, while their science and accounting results were up by 41% and 42% respectively. The majority of SciMathUS students of previous years are currently studying at tertiary institutions. Thirty-two are at the University of Stellenbosch.

Paul Roos Academy – VenFin became a sponsor of this imaginative project to identify leadership talent in disadvantaged schools and to afford these children the opportunity to realise their full potential.

The first group of 60 Grade 7 boys – from seven coloured Afrikaans schools in the Stellenbosch district and five English schools in the Western Cape townships of Langa, Nyanga and Khayelitsha – was admitted to the Academy Programme in April 2003. They were provided with the necessary clothing and school equipment. The following six areas of tuition are covered by the programme: communication, maths, technology, entrepreneurship, culture and sport.

By the time the students reach matric, after being exposed to the Academy for five years, they will have received half a school year’s additional tuition. The backlog of these children is huge but so is their potential, as has clearly been revealed during the first year of the programme.

Rally to Read – for the second successive year, VenFin participated in the Rally to Read programme. Since 1998, this literacy development programme has invested over R9 million in improving the quality of education in remote areas of the country. As part of the programme, off-road vehicles are used annually during May to deliver educational materials such as books and toys to some of the country’s most neglected schools. Participants also gain insight into the conditions under which education takes place in these areas. Research has shown that the level of reading skills of the average 16-year-old child in a rural school lags up to seven years behind that of urban children.

Computers donated and service and support – in line with its philosophy that, as in sound business, an investment in emerging talent and role models has the potential of providing dividends far into the future, VenFin has recently donated some 30 computers to two schools in the Stellenbosch area: Brückner de Villiers and Cloetesville primary schools. CommsCo will provide service and support.

As a company with a strong local presence, VenFin deems it important that schools in the disadvantaged section of the local community are afforded the opportunity of gaining access to advanced teaching aids. They help to overcome historic backlogs and to bring schools more quickly within the main stream of modern information technology.

To add value over the long term, is not only a core value of VenFin’s business philosophy, but also the foundation of its social investment programme.

Brightest Young Minds (BYM) – VenFin has sponsored the fourth annual conference of this imaginative initiative, the aim of which is to create a platform to showcase South Africa’s best emerging talent and to put their development on a fast track.

BYM believes that it takes exceptional people to conquer extraordinary challenges. Every year 100 bright and ambitious post-graduate and final-year students are selected by the Department of Economics and Management Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch and exposed to business leaders and the sponsoring organisations. The idea is to put them in an environment conducive to idea generation and the facilitation of possible initiatives.

BYM’s programme consists of an annual conference and various follow-up sessions between small groups of students and representatives of organisations supporting BYM. This year’s conference was held in Cape Town from 28 June to 6 July.

WWF-SA – during the year under review, VenFin joined this organisation as a corporate member. Highlights of WWF-SA’s activities in the past year include the following:

• The Eco-Schools project has been implemented with great success. More than 160 schools have registered and 57 schools earned their Eco-Schools flags. The project is part of WWF-SA’s Conservation Education Programme.
• The announcement in February by the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Mr Valli Moosa, that five new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) were to be designated in an effort to consolidate South Africa’s marine and coastal conservation areas, represents a huge step forward. The ultimate goal is that ecologically representative MPAs should cover at least 20% of South Africa’s coastline.
• WWF-SA has identified freshwater supplies as amongst its three top conservation priorities and is currently in the process of developing a freshwater programme. This programme will be inclusive of all nine provinces as well as those countries which share rivers with South Africa.

Cultural development
Klein Karoo National Arts Festival – in the 10th year of this successful festival, VenFin has recommitted itself as sponsor for another term of three years, mainly to support certain empowerment proposals on the Festival’s agenda. The Company’s contribution will inter alia be used to stimulate community theatre, thus affording talented amateurs and unemployed youth in the Little Karoo opportunities which otherwise would be hard to attain. A scholarship for exceptional rural talent and training for the management of art institutions in the Oudtshoorn area form part of the sponsorship.

VenFin also supports the Stellenbosch Music Festival which is held annually in the concert halls of the local university. A series of master classes by foremost South African musicians, workshops, community projects, a popular street festival and various exhibitions all form part of the festivities.

Sport development
SA Golf Development Board (SAGDB) – this initiative, the administrative costs of which are sponsored by VenFin and its sister company, Remgro, goes from strength to strength. During the past three years some 6 000 children, mainly from disadvantaged communities, have benefited from it.

While a golf course is merely a place of relaxation for most people, SAGDB regards it as a classroom where vital life skills are taught to young South Africans. A highlight during the past year was the opportunity offered to young players to attend the President’s Cup, where they could not only see some of their heroes in action but also meet them.

SAGDB this year aims to expand its development programmes to the three provinces where the organisation is not yet operational: Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.

Western Cape Cricket Academy – the Academy, of which VenFin is a main sponsor, celebrated its 10th anniversary during the past year together with the celebration of democracy in the country. Besides the top players the Academy produces for the southern provinces and the rest of the country, much is done to promote all aspects of cricket.

Community development
Ikamva Labantu – in partnership with Remgro, VenFin contributes annually to cover the administrative costs of this welfare organisation in the black townships of Cape Town. Ikamva Labantu has more than a thousand community projects under its umbrella and is involved at grassroots level in poverty alleviation.

In a recent report, the Managing Director, Mr Sipho Puwani, said that VenFin’s support has enabled Ikamva to progress from a struggling non-governmental organisation offering survival services to a strategically focused organisation which performs effectively in partnership with communities.

Services are being rendered especially in the following areas: health (home-based care, preventative measures, family enrichment, etc), education and capacity building (foster care, skills development, programmes for seniors, etc), land and buildings (accessibility, pride of ownership, etc) and poverty alleviation, where the emphasis is on food production to reduce dependence.

Circle Wastecraft – A once-off contribution by VenFin during the past year assisted Circle Wastecraft in getting a number of unemployed women from the township Kayamandi in Stellenbosch to produce articles from waste materials for the tourist market. The women use bottles, plastic bags, beads, wire and scrap wood to make these articles.

Organ Donor Foundation of SA – once again the company has been involved in the Foundation’s Gift of Life programme. Several flights, sponsored by VenFin, were undertaken to transport life-giving organs for operations.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

M&I, the service company, strives to afford all staff the opportunity to realise their full potential, in accordance with the Employment Equity Act. A steering committee and various work groups, together with M&I’s management, are continuously involved in determining training and development needs and in the implementation and monitoring of a labour plan. Special attention is given to those groups which, because of historic reasons, might be in a disadvantaged position. In accordance with the requirements of the Employment Equity Act, M&I submitted its fourth labour plan to the Department of Labour during the past year.

Because of the nature of its operations, to provide inter alia core services to VenFin, M&I’s workforce is characterised by the following:

• A high level of expertise within the top structure of the organisation and in various specialised divisions
• A young employee profile, especially with regard to management
• A low turnover rate of staff and, consequently, limited opportunities for new appointments

In view of the constraints inherent in an investment holding company, M&I has, from the outset, chosen a five-year period for its labour plan to allow sufficient time to add value to its labour force.

M&I believes that the quality of its staff affords it an important sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore it believes that its success does not lie in the uniformity of its staff but in the diversity and development of their collective talents. For these, space and opportunity will always be created.

Human resource policies and procedures also address the issues of non-discrimination, child labour, disciplinary practices, human rights et al.

SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT

The Company has a duly constituted safety and health committee as required by the Occupational Health and Safety Act. This committee assists the Board in ensuring that the Company provides and maintains a safe and healthy environment for staff and visitors by identifying risks and ensuring that controls designed to mitigate these risks are effective and complied with.

The Company benchmarks its current environmental practices against the criteria stipulated in the GLOBAL Reporting InitiativeTM (GRI) Framework, being:

• Materials
• Energy
• Water
• Biodiversity
• Emissions, effluents and waste
• Suppliers
• Products and services
• Compliance
• Transport

Where deemed appropriate, usage and impact are being quantified and measured against best practices. Where appropriate, compliance with safety, health and environmental systems are measured against formal standard systems such as ISO and subject to independent review.

HIV/AIDS POLICY

During February 2003, the GRI published a resource document to serve as a reporting guidance on HIV/Aids. Because the GRI chose South Africa as the development area for this resource document, which will eventually become a technical protocol, VenFin chose it as its reporting standard on this matter.

From the perspective of an investment holding company, the risk of HIV/Aids comprises two elements, namely:

Group risk
Given the potential impact of HIV/Aids on the markets, on human capital cost of employment and on the operational processes of the various businesses invested in, this risk is managed within the governance structures of the various companies.

VenFin monitors the progress of these policies and strategies as against best practice standards.

Company risk
VenFin and M&I have a formal HIV/Aids policy and are committed to managing the pandemic actively, and the business risks associated with it. Its policy makes provision, inter alia, for the following:

• Compliance with all legal requirements as far as HIV/Aids is concerned
• No discrimination against employees or potential employees based on their HIV status
• Strict confidential treatment of information on the HIV status of employees
• General measures to prevent accidental infection

Remedi Medical Aid Scheme, of which most of M&I’s staff are members, has a management plan for HIV/Aids and employees can participate in it by choice.