Books and volunteers at KPMG
On Friday 18 July, KPMG South Africa held a Mandela Day book drive, collecting used and new books to donate to schools in need near its countrywide offices.
The Johannesburg branch’s book drive was a huge success, with volunteers filling the book-drive areas from 7.30am.
Each of the areas had a cleaning station for the second-hand books, a wrapping station where all the donated books were wrapped in transparent protective plastic, and a sorting station where the books were sorted into fiction and non-fiction.
Danie van Heerden, who is a member of the KPMG Executive Committee: Risk Management & Marketing, joked that it was typical of accountants to have set the stations up so efficiently.
The KPMG Family for Literacy (KFFL) was actually started in its American branches, but quickly spread to South Africa. The main objective of the KFFL is to work against illiteracy, not just on Mandela Day, but all year round.
This year, however, KPMG has partnered with the Nelson Mandela Foundation for a dedicated Mandela Day initiative – to deliver a library full of books to Parktown Public School.
Van Heerden said that they chose to focus their efforts on literacy because they “want to do something sustainable”. This is, after all, the spirit of Mandela Day – to make every day a Mandela Day.
Danie van Heerden - Executive Committee: Risk Management & Marketing
For the book drive, KPMG comes together as a family and a community – anyone is welcome to join in and volunteer whenever they have a book drive, especially the families of those who work at KPMG.
Gavin de Lange, a KPMG director, said that one of the benefits of the book drive is that “it gets people engaged and gets the whole organisation working together as a community”.
KPMG community members can participate by volunteering their time to help get the books ready for presentation to the schools, or they can buy a book to donate to the school – the cost of the book will be matched by the KPMG Fund and donated to the schools.
Although Parktown Public School is the main beneficiary of the drive, by midday KPMG Johannesburg had collected over 4 000 books, so two other nearby schools will also be receiving new books for their libraries.
School children from St Katharines who volunteered to cover books
Thenjiwe, one of the receptionists at KPMG, and a book cleaner for the day, said the book drive is “a very good idea, because we need to support children; education is so important, and it also helps to remind us of Tata Mandela”.
Children from other schools in the area also came to KPMG to help wrap books. A Grade 7 learner from St Katharine’s School said, “I see it as a day of giving, not giving physically but giving of your time and what you do and helping people”.
Van Heerden similarly said: “People just inherently love doing something good,” and it seems that he is right.
The books collected, cleaned and covered today will be officially presented to Parktown Public School next Friday.