What started as a project to spend 67 minutes volunteering for Mandela Day 2016, has now evolved into a six-month dedicated project to better the lives of a group of elderly and disabled children.
The UD Trucks team at the GTO assembly plant and head office in Rosslyn, decided to donate their time and resources to upgrade the Kids Victory Care Centre (or Madidi Centre) in Klipgat, in the North West Province, to celebrate the life and legacy of President Nelson Mandela. However after seeing the immense need and work required at the centre, the team collectively decided to extend their involvement for up to six months.
On Friday, 15 July, the restoration project kicked-off with staff spending 180 minutes at the centre cleaning, painting, fixing and reorganising the facility. This was pre-empted by the UD maintenance crew who restored the house’s borehole and water tank to secure running water for the workers and inhabitants of the facility.
Staff also generously donated everything from clothes, cookware, books, toys and food to linen, to help alleviate some of the inhabitant’s immediate needs. A dedicated project team is already hard at work to ensure that the additional work to fix ceilings, repair plumbing and sanitation, as well as to add some much-needed appliances to ease the workload of the staff, will all be done in good time.
The residents and the community were also given soup on the day, thanks to the generous donation of a thousand cups of warm, nutritious soup and bread by the Shoprite Soup Kitchen feeding scheme. The Midrand Round Table also kindly donated five hospital beds – a much-needed addition to the centre.
UD Trucks would also like to extend their heartfelt appreciation to a number of suppliers who made this day possible. These included Servest Cleaning, Reality Wellness Group, Makrosafe Holdings, Flight Specials Centurion and Sanitech.
Well done and a great big thank you to every UD team member who went the extra mile on Mandela Day (and beyond)!
