Current Articles
Tshikululu CEO wins financial services award
Tshikululu Social Investments is pleased to announce the awarding of its CEO, Tracey Henry, as financial services category winner in the “2010 Most Influential Women in Business and Government Awards” at a ceremony at Midrand’s Gallagher Estate today.
“This recognition is especially pleasing as it shows an appreciation of the CSI fund and trust management that has been undertaken by Tshikululu on behalf of major South African corporations for the past 12 years”, notes Henry. “Gratifying too is that it should be made for the work of our not-for-profit company, despite our being bracketed with top range financial services institutions.”
Tshikululu managed R495 million of corporate social investment funds in 2009, and acts as grantmaker manager to community development initiatives throughout South Africa. Clients whose CSI trusts are managed include Anglo American, De Beers, the FirstRand Group, Discovery, and UTi.
This work saw Tshikululu undertake 241 individual project site visits last year, and process more than 3 000 applications for NGO funding. Tshikululu is South Africa’s largest private sector vehicle for corporate social investment grantmaking.
The power of cellphones in the classroom
A South African education company has figured out a way to allow children to access electronic books (e-books) even when they do not have access to desktop computers.
In South Africa, the government is still unable to ensure that the 12- million-odd pupils in public schools get all the textbooks they need. Only 14,8% of households, and only 33% of schools, have computers that are used for teaching and learning.
However, a University of SA survey of Gauteng high school pupils showing 75,4% access the internet via cellphones, suggests the ability to open a textbook using a device many pupils have opens up great possibilities.
Star Schools, which provides extra tuition to 37000 children nationally, and 22000 by distance tuition, is to launch this technology nationally through its technology division, My Star, next month . The system will also allow children to pay only for the parts of the e-books they need .
Maths teacher Guy Hees, who moderated Star Schools’ maths e-book, says while the new technology has not yet been widely used, or stood the test of a matric exam, he expects it to be “hugely effective”. Children like modern technology that is “accessible 24/7” , he says. “They can hugely benefit from this … at this stage, there are universities in the US, but not schools, that are using this type of technology,” says Prof Hees, who taught in a Los Angeles district five years ago.
English teacher Karen Ehlers, who has used the Grade 11 English First Additional Language e-book , says her pupils have welcomed it . “They love it. They are excited and they want to come to class…. It’s not chalk and talk any more, they want interactivity.”
Read the full article at Business Day.
Political will can solve malnutrition in Africa
“Children don’t vote,” said Dr Robert Mwadime, of Uganda Action for Nutrition, at a session on the subject before the three-day African Union (AU) meeting opened in Kampala, Uganda. This means that political leaders in Africa often pay scant attention to the millions of children who die every year of malnutrition-related causes. Most of the audience nodded in agreement; many clapped.
The theme of the AU meeting was “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa”, so it was an apt opportunity to wave the flag. “Nutrition is practically an orphan,” Mkandawire commented. About 40 percent of children younger than five in Africa are chronically malnourished.
Activist argues against South Africa’s mass HIV testing campaign
South Africa’s campaign to test 15 million people for HIV in one year risks being implemented in a way that undermines people’s human rights, the activist Mark Heywood told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference in Vienna. Incidents of coercive testing have been recorded but the lack of effective monitoring procedures means that it’s impossible to know whether those incidents are widespread or not.
South Africa ‘failing in child health’
South Africa is one of 12 countries that has failed to reduce child mortality since 1990, according to the 2009/10 SA Child Gauge released on Tuesday.
Children were paying the price for the country’s failure to progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aimed to reduce poverty, hunger and disease by 2015 and to ensure children’s rights to survival, health and development, it said.
More Gauteng clinics set to provide ARVs
The number of clinics in Gauteng providing Anti-Retroviral Treatment to HIV positive patients is set to increase by 61 by the end of the month.
Health and Social Development MEC Qedani Mahlangu has ordered that all clinics should provide the treatment by September, in line with the new treatment guidelines that came into effect in April. ARV treatment was previously available in hospitals and community health centres.
Finding the missing link in HIV battle
South Africa is moving fast to consolidate the scientific breakthrough announced last week by local HIV and Aids experts, who showed that a vaginal gel containing the antiretroviral tenofovir could prevent HIV in 40 percent of women.
South Africa is bad on the environment
South Africa scores relatively poorly on environmental conditions, the Organisation for Co-Operation and Development (OECD) said on Monday as it released its first economic survey of the country.
This was due to its industrial structure and its heavy reliance on coal for electricity generation.
Favourable energy prices for some large industrial users, electricity prices that did not cover capital costs for the development of new capacity, and low coal purchase prices for the dominant electricity generator had all tended to hinder economic efficiency and aggravate carbon emissions.
The OECD is an international organisation which says it helps governments tackle the economic, social and governance challenges of a global economy.
Read more at TimesLive.
Microbicide gel found to reduce AIDS risk in women
News sources world-wide are buzzing this morning with the results of a South African study which suggests that a woman’s risk of infection with HIV can be significantly cut by the use of a vaginal gel containing the antiretroviral drug tenofovir.
The research, which will be presented today at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna, was leaked out a day early, sending a wave of optimism through the AIDS research community.
US study says poverty, more than race, tied to HIV
Poverty is perhaps the most important factor in whether inner-city heterosexuals are infected with the AIDS virus, according to the first US government study of its kind.
The study, released Monday, suggests that HIV is epidemic in certain poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods. And, more significantly, poor heterosexuals in those neighborhoods were twice as likely to be infected as heterosexuals who lived in the same community but had more money.
