John van Reenen is a strong believer in giving back to the community. Along with his wife, Bhawna Gulab, they established The Building Exciting Education Trust (BEE) to upgrade primary schools in underprivileged areas of Johannesburg and Cape Town. The main focus of BEE is to give children, many from squatter camps in the areas, hope that they can aspire to better living standards, and to make their schools a place where they would like to spend more time. Schools are chosen from the very poorest areas, which typically have no maintenance expenditure allocations. BEE employs unemployed parents of the schools as tilers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and general labourers. It supplies all the materials, and supervises the upgrading of classrooms, toilets and school grounds. Funded mostly out of their own pockets Van Reenen says education is the basis for success. “That is why we as a company have been successful, because we are always learning and therefore we are innovative.”
