Giving back to the community is close to our heart- learn more about the initiatives we are involved with.
Giving back is an incredible privilege and is something that is one of our core focuses for The Excellence Group. We have developed lasting relationships with two incredible initiatives that get involved with our community by giving back.
We are always overwhelmed by the support and involvement of everyone in the company from the front of house to the factory to the directors. Each person takes the initiative to get involved and help make someone else’s lives better.
Ladles of Love:
This Cape Town-born initiative stemmed from the dire need of helping local communities around the Western Cape. It began with a single soup kitchen that was serving around 70 hot meals at their first official event to support numerous community kitchens, schools, social enterprises and NPO’s. This allows for a greater reach for the community and helping those who need it most.
One of their social initiatives includes The Sandwich Drive– with a core focus to nourish the nation through the creation and distribution of ready-made sandwiches. What started out as a small, door to door operation, quickly turned into a large-scale project where they now have multiple drop-off points across the peninsula.
We acknowledged the great work that Ladles of Love was doing and saw an opportunity for us to get involved. We successfully completed a company-wide sandwich drive as part of our Mandela Day efforts. Each of our showrooms, factories and offices set up a station to make sandwiches and make a difference in the communities that Ladles of Love serve. Through this sandwich drive, we managed to make a substantial 5 300 sandwiches thanks to our wonderful sponsors from Sasko who we partnered with to make this day happen.
The Little Optimist Trust:
It all began with a man named Greg Bertish who fell incredibly ill. He was misdiagnosed, in and out of operations and on drips 24/7. His optimism and passion for the ocean helped him to overcome his disease and he became inspired to make a difference in his community to promote positivity, passion and purpose for those needing to overcome obstacles.
In 2016, Bertish set up a voyage on the open ocean to travel 200km’s in a dinghy in an attempt to raise funds for the Red Cross Children’s Hospital. He managed to raise R300 000 which went to the construction of a new ICU at the hospital. This helped his mission to create a better future for these children and assist in creating more positivity in their lives.
Today, The Little Optimist Trust offers hope and inspiration to marginalized children through sailing and other initiatives. The foundational belief is that by changing one’s outlook, you can affect your mental health and ability to tackle life’s challenges. Not only does this initiative care for the mental well-being of their beneficiaries, but they also tend to their physical needs through raising funds for the management and refurbishment of educational and child care facilities. These facilities become a home for the children as many of them are left to fend for themselves after they have been diagnosed.
Our involvement with The Little Optimist Trust has varied over the years. From sponsoring a dinghy where one of our employees hopped into the boat and sailed in order to raise awareness and funds for the trust, to attending events and donating a variety of kitchens and joinery items for facilities in need.
We started at the Mfuleni Edu-Care Centre where we donated and installed one of our kitchens in the centre. After we helped with the refurbishment of the centre we were able to spend time with the children.
One of the main drives that we did was to gather furniture from donations to successfully refurbish the William Slater Center for Adolescents and Young Adults. Dulux sponsored all of the paint that we needed to complete the project while Roco donated handles for the kitchen and Lansdowne Boards donated the countertop of the kitchen that we installed. We saw overwhelming support from everyone in the company in their donation of time and furniture pieces for the centre.
While we have completed many drives and initiatives in the past, we are geared up and ready to continue giving back and make a difference in the future. We have a few projects in the pipeline that will come to fruition in the following months that we are incredibly excited about. Keep your eyes peeled on our social media to follow the progress of these wonderful community outreach programmes and get involved with our community yourself.
