Nedbank staff members donate food to vulnerable communities

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Nedbank Namibia employees have collected more than 1 600 jars filled with non-perishable food items, which will be donated to vulnerable communities.

The food items were collected as part of the ‘Jar of Hope’ challenge, which began as an inter-departmental competition and quickly grew into a national initiative. Teams at the various branches countrywide competed to fill as many jars as possible with non-perishable food items, and these will be handed over to charities selected by employees in the various towns where the bank is represented.

The challenge was initiated by the bank’s finance department, with Nedbank employee Lizette Kotze spearheading the initiative.

Kotze told Nampa on Wednesday the challenge, which began just a few weeks ago, resulted in 1 671 jars being filled with non-perishable food items such as beans, stock cubes, rice, lentils and soup powder.

A total of 261 staff members participated in the challenge, with the winning team determined by the number of jars filled relative to the actual members within each team.

The winning team was from the Nedbank Grootfontein Branch, a team of only four members who filled 118 jars.

“I saw the campaign on social media and it piqued my interest because it’s such a simple initiative that anyone can work on, even on an individual basis. When a challenge is taken up by many people rather than just a few, the impact of the initiative is always multiplied and far-reaching. When I saw this, I decided to ask my team if they were interested in taking on the challenge, and to my surprise, they were just as excited as I was,” Kotze said.

Nedbank Communications and PR Manager Selma Kaulinge said her department contributed to the challenge by donating and ensuring that the challenge was widely publicised throughout the bank.

“The sheer spirit displayed by all of my colleagues during this initiative will live with me forever. Not only do we take pride in our mission of being money experts who do well, but we also go out into the community to make a difference. This is just one of many employee initiatives that are linked to our already established framework for corporate social investment. As a responsible company, we have a responsibility to help the communities in which we operate, and we will continue to do so,” Kaulinge said.

While the team in Windhoek handed over their donation last week, the teams in the remaining branches will hand over their jars once they have identified the charities of their choice.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency