The Volkswagen Amarok is down at the bottom end of the commercial vehicle scale but we just could not let this good deed go unnoticed as it embraces all the right stuff.
Each year young girls in impoverished communities can miss up to 50 days of school for not having the correct hygiene products at their disposal. This important, but often unmentioned, challenge of keeping young women in school is at the heart of the Caring4Girls and Trek4Mandela Initiatives.
Thomas Schaefer, chairman and managing director of Volkswagen Group South Africa (VWSA) and his wife Wendy, recently delivered over 2 300 sanitary towels to Nkululeko Secondary School in KwaNobuhle, Uitenhage. These sanitary towels were purchased using funds raised by the late Gugu Zulu, member of the Volkswagen Motorsport family, during his Trek4Mandela campaign to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in July.
In Gugu’s honour, further donations were arranged by Volkswagen Motorsport and Volkswagen employees as part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative themed ‘Volkswagen for Good’.
In addition to the MD’s delivery, over 15 000 packets of sanitary towels were delivered in the same week to more than 1 200 girls to keep them in school until their final exams in November. This equates to a four-month supply per school girl.
Caring4Girls is a programme that helps underprivileged girls mainly in rural communities. The main objective of the programme, which is run by the Imbumba Foundation and funded by the Trek4Mandela initiative, is to provide hygiene training and products to underprivileged girls.
The delivery to Nonkululeko Secondary School in KwaNobuhle was undertaken as part of the Amarok Social Test Drive Campaign. Amarok Social Test Drive allows companies and individuals to put the Amarok through its paces while delivering much-needed supplies to people in hard-to-reach communities in South Africa.
To date, the campaign – dubbed ‘the test drive that matters’ – has travelled more than 16 000 kilometres across the country and delivered over 15.8 tonnes of items including water to drought-hit towns in Free State and sewing machines to unemployed women in KwaZulu Natal.
“Education is one of the focus points in our CSR programme and as a caring company, Volkswagen has a responsibility to help vulnerable members of the communities that we serve. We hope our Amarok Social Test Drive delivery will make a difference in the lives of these young girls and make others aware of this important need in poor communities. Volkswagen is proud to have been a part of this initiative. It is life changing not only for the young girls we are helping but for us as a company to be able to give back to this community that has supported us for the last 65 years,” says Schaefer.
FleetWatch lifts its hat to VWSA on this fine deed.
Protecting the Rhino
And talking of the Amarok and fine deeds, it has just come to our attention that Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has renewed its support of the Forever Wild Rhino Protection Initiative by extending the sponsorship of six new Amarok double cabs for another year.
Volkswagen has been partnering with this initiative since 2011 and in the last five years, the Amaroks have assisted in the arrest of suspected poachers; the confiscation of firearms; the recovery of rhino horn; extended patrols in game parks around the country; rhino tracking exercises and the relocation of rhino for safety reasons as well as support to aerial teams across the country.
Whoop Whoop to Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles for helping to ensure that our grand-kids get to see rhino in the wild as we did when we were kids.
