Page 70 - SAPREF 50 year

SAPREF’s Managing Director, Andy Warner, right, presents a cheque for R100 000 to Professor AL du Preez of the Natal Technikon in 1985.
Below: Youngsters from neighbouring communities respond enthusiastically during the Youth Day Conference initiated by the SAPREF CLF in 2010.
Sustainable Development
The department had its genesis in 2001/2 when SAPREF volunteered to undergo a Social Performance Review by Shell. A recommendation from the review was that SAPREF should employ a Sustainable Development Manager to head the department, which then consisted of a Communications Manager, Communication Assistant, and Community Liaison Officer. The intention was to bring greater focus to managing SAPREF’s social performance.
Two of the longest-serving
members of the department were Communications Manager, Margaret Rowe, who retired in 2012, and Community Liaison Officer, Leonard Mbokazi, who left SAPREF in 2013 due to ill health. Over the years both Margaret and Leonard became the face and voice of SAPREF in the community. Margaret and Leonard, supported by the rest of SAPREF, played a big role in improving SAPREF’s relations with the community over the years.
Margaret, who was appointed Communications Manager in 2000, particularly remembers the challenges of starting the SAPREF Community Liaison Forum. “We had
a slow start, and despite opposition from
a small sector of the community, got the initiative off the ground with a number of interested community groups,” she says. “The
SAPREF: FUELLING SA FOR 50 YEARS
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