Even in today's day and age, the reality in South Africa is that many government schools in rural areas are too far to reach, transportation is non-existent and concerns for security are among reasons parents abandon educating their children.
The Microsoft PAN EMEA LAR PC-WARE has given support in education to 20 children that were not in a position to afford any education. PC-WARE has formulated a long-term relationship to these 20 children that runs until these children graduate from high school. The international ICT company, PC-WARE, has made it possible for 20 children from a disadvantaged environment to get an education and help to create a good basis so they can grow into a better future.
PC-WARE strongly believes that the quality of education has an influence upon the speed with which individuals can improve their own productivity and income at a later stage, and that is why the PAN EMEA LAR have come up with the idea to create something substantial that will not expire, education that will be there at all times for the rest of their lives.
PC-WARE has started further to establish a library in Kliptown. Annette Mueller (Operations Manager at PC-WARE and head of the project) says:” We know that the entrepreneurs, investors and major leaders of tomorrow need books today. And we should help until each child, waiting for us, has a book in their life. With the library club for our Soweto children, we would like to set an example and help to solve the problem of access to education. A very good side-effect is that this library will still be there in 10 or 20 years and all books can be read by many more than our 20 children.”
Over the past years PC-WARE has lent support to the Soweto Kliptown Youth since 2005. We have made it possible for 20 children, aged between four and 10, to be educated through to graduation from high school. PC-WARE provides additional finances for meals, books and school uniforms.
Annette Mueller: “We monitor the children's development through regular reports and can therefore respond quickly and easily to their special needs.”
PC-WARE employees in South Africa and around the globe where PC-WARE has affiliates see this project as a personal duty. Employees from the branch office in Johannesburg regularly visit the children in their own environment, enquire about their progress and the youngsters' needs so that they can help directly if required. Employees from all the other subsidiaries organise regular internal fundraising events to support urgent work such as renovating the sanitary installations, repairing the roof or buying new beds.
This allows both sides to gain an immediate insight into the other's world - for a lifetime.
While PC-WARE South Africa is busy with their Financial Year end - March 2009, most of the staff do not stop their work on a Friday afternoon, but are involved very often over the weekend with the children from the Soweto Kliptown community. This is an engagement by heart and PC-WARE management and its employees see it as their duty to help a previously disadvantaged community as much as possible, and to invest in education but also the need to share material wealth.
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