Pragma, South Africa’s leading asset management engineering firm, has joined hands with the South African Maintenance Company (SAMCo) to donate and install palisade fencing at Shiloh Wallacedene. Shiloh Wallecedene is one of four preschools run by Shiloh Synergy, a non-profit company based in Brackenfell, Cape Town.
“Our goal is to make education of excellence available to children that would not have been able to afford it otherwise. To take the children off the streets and give them a world-class education. We teach them about love, about respect, about who they are and then as a bonus, they get the best education possible. And they thrive when they go to primary school; all our feedback is wonderful,” says Estelle Veldman, managing director of Shiloh Synergy.
In volatile areas such as Wallecedene, ensuring that the children and teachers are safe is a high priority. As an SED contractor who has been working with Pragma since 2015, projects such as this lies close to Craig Petersen’s heart. Craig is the owner of SAMCo, a general maintenance company that serves the petrochemical industry. “The need here is very much security. I have children of my own, and I want to make sure that they are safe where they are educated,” says Craig.
“We heard about this project through Pragma and thought that this is the perfect opportunity for us to give back to the community. We can relate to the work that Shiloh Synergy does in the community, especially because many of our people come from areas like this. It is basically just an honour and privilege to help them,” explains Craig.
Shiloh Synergy’s Jubilee Excellence Schools’ (JES) curriculum is aimed at preparing children not only for primary school but also for life. While the curriculum is based on biblical principles, it is Montessori orientated and incorporates elements of South Africa’s national curriculum.
Morné van Tonder, Pragma Financial Director, explains, “We have an SED Committee to whom any staff member can submit an application. They assess all applications and will then decide where to spend the SED budget. They try to get involved with education. I nominated Shiloh because my mother has been involved with Shiloh for a number of years and at one stage she ran an orphanage for them.”
Pragma sees SED and CSI projects as an employee engagement driver. As a result, we actively support projects in which our employees are involved. Examples include tutoring at schools, participation in school career days, small business training, school feeding schemes and educational support. While we support traditional corporate social investment (CSI) initiatives, our focus has shifted to socio-economic development (SED) to assist non-profit organisations more sustainably.
For more information about Shiloh Synergy and the projects that they run, visit http://www.shiloh.org.za.
