News

Tshikululu Social Investments releases 2009 Report to Society

15 June 2010

We are pleased to announce the release of Tshikululu Social Investments’ 2009 Report to Society, available on our website for download in PDF format here. The Report speaks to our specific role at Tshikululu.

We are gratified with our performance last year, some of the facts of which are that:

• Client CSI funds and trusts managed by Tshikululu rose to R495 million from R467 million (2008);
• We housed new client social investment funds of R68 million;
• Site visits were carried out to 241 projects;
• Almost 3 000 project funding applications were assessed; and
• New thought leadership platforms brought best-in-kind CSI knowledge to increasing numbers of people in the private sector.

But numbers and figures aside, you may be interested in what drives us. As you will see in our reporting, Tshikululu’s 12-year experience has convinced us of the ability of South Africans to better themselves when given the opportunity.

Indeed, our very core understanding is based on humanity – a belief in its potential for good; a wariness of its capacity for wrong; and a determination to promote justice based on liberty. Yet we are very aware that CSI cannot cure poverty; only robust economic growth can do that. Our purpose, and that of our remarkable clients, is rather to assist this by unshackling those in our country whose circumstances prevent their reaching their potential in various ways.

Ours is an approach of “œbacking change champions” and so helping to transform society for the better through their initiative. It rests on a sunny disposition and a confidence in possibility, and its mandate is a flexible one based on a realistic, and optimistic, understanding of what works best.

Our work is therefore about fundamentally altering developmental dependency that relies on the top-down strategies of those with resources, to the partnering, bottom-up, of the efforts and innovation of others. It is a profound approach to what the private sector can do in its broader societal efforts.

We trust that you will find this Report stimulating, and we look forward to receiving your feedback on it.