When Martin Keck, managing director of CFR Freight, challenged the staff to find a sustainable corporate social responsibility project, it gave Samantha Tandani (who is on a learnership at CFR) of Port Elizabeth an opportunity to help her old pre-primary school. The Luyanda Crèche and Pre-School was housed in a rusty and leaky corrugated iron shack with old pallets as flooring in the Motherwell Township, about 30 kilometres from the Port Elizabeth city centre. “At first the request was to fix the leaky roof, but once we had visited the school and realised how unsafe the place was we decided that we had to start from scratch and rebuild it,” says Keck. In addition to re-building the crèche and pre-school, the area has been fenced off and grassed to give the children somewhere safe to play. Keck says CFR will continue to support the crèche. There is still much to do, from paving the entrance and developing a vegetable garden that can offer food for the children to developing a proper play area with jungle gyms. This will be done under the watchful eye of the branch manager Beverley Brennan and her team. “We can’t just build the school and walk away. In our business we strive to continuously improve. We have to do the same in the community,” he says. CAPTION Back to school ... at the opening of the new Luyanda Crèche in Motherwell Port Elizabeth are, from the left, Samantha Tandani (CFR intern), her niece Lulutho, CFR branch manager Beverley Brennan and managing director Martin Keck.
