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Essay: Social issues in South Africa & analysis of a CSR initiative

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  • Subject area(s): Sociology essays
  • Reading time: 6 minutes
  • Price: Free download
  • Published: 30 November 2015*
  • Last Modified: 27 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 1,599 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 7 (approx)
  • Tags: Corporate social responsibility

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This page of the essay has 1,599 words.

Unemployment

Unemployment occurs when someone is without work or is seeking work. Unemployment in South Africa has been on the increase since 1994 as the rate of unemployment stood at 20.5% and from then in 2014 the rate of unemployment stood at 25.2%. there are many causes for unemployment such as apartheid, labor demand, the effects of the 2008/2009 global recession etc. shown in the table below is the unemployment rate of the youth and adults. From the table below the youth are struggling more to become employed than the adults do as there are a lot more youth that are looking for jobs in south Africa and not enough jobs for the amount of youth there is in south Africa. The government of South Africa is working together with social partners to work out how to lower these percentages of unemployment. By this they plan to lower the percentage to 14% in 2020 and 6% in 2030.

Education

The process of giving or receiving systematic instructions, especially at a school or university. Discipline and security are social issues when it comes to education. Security and discipline talk about the safety of children is schools and keeping the children safe but not only the school looking after the kids but there has been incidents of kids arming themselves to reduce violence to themselves because most of the violence that goes on in school is because of gangs.

Water and electricity

Everyone in South Africa has the right to water and electricity and the problem is there is a shortage of both in South Africa and water and electricity plays a huge role in social and economical development. People are willing to conserve the usage of water and electricity but only with constant and effective feed back on how much they have used and whether or not they need to cut down or not. People do not know how much water and electricity they use so in order for them to do something about it they need to know exactly how much they use in order for them to cut down on usages but it is peoples right to electricity as long as it is paid for on time it should then be supplied.

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus. HIV has emerged from a unknown virus into a pandemic and unfortunately millions of people suffer from this virus. Today there are approximately 40.3 million HIV sufferers and this is on the rise as well. The immense fear of this virus has lead to fear and hysteria and this has lead to stigma and discrimination of those infected around the world and in order to fight HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination need to be adequately addressed. The stigma and discrimination of HIV are said to be that people with HIV are to be alienated and should known as someone different. Discrimination can also result when stigmatization is acted upon and it can take many forms such as: lack of access to equal health care, denial of equal opportunities for employment, denial of education to HIV positive children and detention of HIV infected persons. This affects the economy because although It has not been shown yet drastically the population will be soon affected by this virus because more people will contract this virus and more people will be living with it to crippling the environment. In the table below it is illustrated that starting from 2003 the deaths from AIDS have been higher than normal deaths and will increase dramatically through the next 5 ‘ 10 years. It is predicted that by 2015 the deaths caused by AIDS will rise to about 8,000.

Poverty and South Africa.

Poverty is of a huge concern as it can have its affects on many things such as crime, crime is a huge after effect of poverty, as people do not have money so they resort to crime. Usually poverty occurs in a community or in great amounts of people. Child poverty is another form of poverty that is a problem faced especially in South Africa as child poverty is a huge problem as little children cannot fend for themselves or do labor to earn money so they can work until they are at least 16. poverty is linked to South Africa as it is on the increase as many people these days cannot get jobs that are sustainable and that pay well enough to help a person these days. As the number of people living in poverty has been on the increase since 2010 and is still unfortunately on the increase as in 2014 the poverty numbers increased from 20% in 2010 to 21.5% in 2014 and this might not seem like a high increase but it is and it will cause more problems to come if it is not fixed or decreased. Poverty can be permanent or temporary as someone could have money and then not have money also because it is a concept, which includes social, political and economical elements.

So as you can see the increase of poverty in South Africa is mainly because of the lack of employment as shown in this chart being on the increase from 2012 – 2015. Poverty does not only effect South Africa as it is everywhere in the world and not everyone is employed and is earning a fixed salary.

Hollard insurance company CSR

The large organization I have chosen is Hollard insurance company. I chose hollard as they are apart of CSR that help young children between the ages of 0 -9 years old and this touched me as I think that kids less fortunate then others should be helped with finances for their health, nutrition and education. I also chose this corporation because if I have to be involved in CSR I would most definitely help children that need help with health and education, as they cannot afford it themselves, as they do not have jobs. These are the reasons for my choice of this business.

Broad outline of their CSR strategy.

Hollards strategies in their CSR department is to help others and help people that cannot help themselves either because they are ill or because they are to young to earn money by financially supporting these charities with the capital to help these people in need. So examples of what hollard has done in the past are

  • Early childhood development Centre’s.
  • After ‘ school care Centre’s.
  • Homes for children infected.
  • Healing through the arts child and youth Centre.
  • Thuthuka bursary fund through the South African institute of chartered accountants.

These are just some of the CSR acts hollard have been involve in.

Hollards major concerns

Hollards main concern at the moment is to support children with health, nutrition and education. They do this through the hollard foundation trust that they founded in 2006 through which they have been supporting this financially through employee involvement and volunteering for the past 9 years. They invest their capital in the children foundation of children 0- 9 years old. This foundation that they support is based in midvaal, a large municipal area south of Johannesburg, providing these children with the opportunity to allow them to achieve to the best of their abilities in life. Hollards CSI programme supports the foundations initiative the their employee Volunteering Programme. In this CSR commitment of hollard the provide physical activities to the kids ‘ sporting days, painting and maintenance of facilities, sanding desks ad planting vegetable gardens. They also d skills transferring meaning they volunteer their skills at schools and other projects and in the communities in the form of saving education programmes. Also they assist with care, health and nurturing whereby they interact and assist with needs of the children. I chose this CSR commitment because it is the one that hollard is focusing on at the moment and to me is by far the biggest CSR commitment I have seen in a long time.

SWOT analysis of hollards project they have instituted.

STRENGTHS.

  • Focused on one community so the community they are focusing on will get th best out of the project.
  • Hollard has got the capital to be able to fund this project and also have correct marketing skills to be able to raise funds if need be.
  • This project is original and unique in its own way.

WEAKNESSES.

  • Hollard could be reaching more communities instead of just one community.
  • Hollard will struggle with the dedication and time as there main focus of the business is insurance and not CSR.

OPPORTUNITIES.

  • To help the community.
  • To gain awareness for the company.
  • To uplift people morals and help people achieve the best they can in life

THREATS.

  • Since this is a charity project Hollard will not have many threats because there is no other corporations doing the same project as them.
  • The may be seen to be discriminating against other communities who need the same help.

Sustainability in relation to the project.

Sustainability in dictionary terms is the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. In other words sustainability is the endurance of systems and processes and the organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development and this includes the four domains: ecology, economics, politics and culture. And these are interconnected with bearable, equitable and sustainable.

Sustainability is connected to Hollards project in a way that they need to keep in up and running and cannot promise financial aid to a charity or foundation and not follow through with it s in other words you need to keep your plans running smoothly and execute them correctly in order to keep the project running sustainably. If they cannot do this project will come to an end very quickly because it cannot stay at a level they can run smoothly at.

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