You need to be celebrated!
Above is a countdown, informing us that we are only seven days away from the close of nominations for the 2022 CSI Legacy Awards. Y have until midnight 30 September to nominate a company, NGO or programme for one of several categories honouring the best in CSI over the past twelve months. Nominate here.
We’ve been pleased to see such great companies and programmes being nominated as Afrika Tikkun, Youth Employment Services (YES), Tomorrow Trust, Food for Life Africa, Steps, Ikusasa Student Financial Services, Next Generation, Old Mutual, Xylem and more. We can’t wait to start going through the entries and discovering what our adjudicators have to say.
The CSI Legacy Awards are scheduled for 24 February 2022. Please diarise! We’ll be recognising and showcasing outstanding work performed by CSI practitioners in every sector, many of whom have done outstanding work in the midst of a series of hardships and disasters. Among them we can list Covid-19, the fires that broke out at Charlotte Maxeke Hospital and UCT, and the recent unrest and looting in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – apart from the ongoing crisis of unemployment and inequality that continues to beset our society.
Looking back over the year, it’s hard not to conclude that South Africans are some of the most generous, imaginative and energetic people on the planet, and that our CSI Departments and NGOs are staffed by the very best. I know of more than one person in CSI who lost a loved one to Covid, and three or four days later were back at work, delivering food parcels, providing shelter, visiting looted sites in KZN and truly giving of themselves. Many have still not taken the time to truly grieve.
Others were felled, temporarily, by the disease, but got back in the saddle and immediately increased their CSI budget so that others could receive the help they needed. When UCT and Charlotte Maxeke experienced devastating fires, CSI practitioners jumped into action to see where and how they could help. It is thanks to their efforts that hours after the UCT fires broke out, students had already been fed and re-housed. The speed at which our corporate CSI departments are able to move in crisis was amazing to see.
In KZN, companies have conceptualised programmes, sent food aid by the truck load and are currently sponsoring leadership programmes in communities all over the province to develop the kind of leadership we need in these stressed and divisive times.
All of this needs to be recognised and celebrated. We need a breather – a time to reflect and acknowledge – and this is what our CSI Legacy Awards offer the industry.
Please nominate your choice of company, NGO or social entrepreneur before the closing date of 30 September, whether you nominate your own or another entity.
We look forward to celebrating the inaugural CSI Legacy Awards on 24 February 2022 with you. The event will be virtual, but still a black-tie affair, and one which we believe will reinvigorate the industry with examples of excellence that we can all learn from and emulate.
Hope to see you there!
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