Page 57 - Integrated Annual Report

CORPORATE SOCIAL INVESTMENT
Financial year 2021 was an extraordinarily difficult one for ourselves and our beneficiaries. For the year under review, the Foundation supported 65 grant beneficiaries and 203 bursary recipients.
Following the first lockdown at the end of March, projects had to re-invent themselves in line with COVID-19 protocols to keep delivering their services. The Foundation assisted by bringing organisations together in online workshops to share their experiences of re-imagining their work.
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT (“ECD”)
Putting parents at the centre of children’s education
COVID-19 and lockdown brought ECD organisations to the brink of collapse as parents were no longer able to pay fees and the Government stimulus package was not paid to practitioners. The sector marshalled a unified, holistic response, which included advocacy for government subsidies to ECD centres and the provision of food parcels,
Wordworks – Eastern and Western Cape
Wordworks focuses on the development of early language and literacy during the first eight years of life. The Little Stars Open Educational Resource Programme aims to strengthen the teaching of pre-Grade R language and literature through its multi-lingual, story-based training programme.
Following lockdown, the online training-of-trainers course supported home-based learning in four
We conducted virtual site visits to stay in touch with the challenges experienced by our beneficiaries and were impressed by their creative and flexible problem- solving approach. This produced valuable, unforeseen benefits, the learnings from which have since been integrated into ongoing programme practice.
In this report, we focus primarily on the adaptive efforts made by educational programmes, from Early Childhood Development “ECD” to Tertiary, to use precious learning time optimally under difficult circumstances.
masks and sanitisers to communities in need, thus enabling the safe re-opening of ECD centres and schools. This experience has resulted in a strengthened, highly collaborative national network of ECD organisations, eleven of which we supported during the last year. The work of two of them is highlighted below.
languages. With children out of school for an extended period, parents and carers became the centre of their children’s education. Mini-lessons for home use were widely circulated, ensuring that learning and stimulation continued at home. The online training course had the additional lasting benefit of helping Wordworks extend its reach beyond the Eastern and Western Cape in a cost-effective way.
HOSKEN CONSOLIDATED INVESTMENTS LIMITED
INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT 2021 55