Silverstar plays, plants and provides for the community
Silverstar Casino’s community caring upped a notch in the last quarter as the property embraced various awareness days with donations, involvement, and celebrations – adding value to many hundreds of lives in the Mogale City area in recognition of International Literacy Day, Arbour Week, Older Persons Week, and International Day of the Girl Child.
For International Literacy Day on 17 September, a team of Silverstar staff volunteers visited Mohlakano Primary School in Randfontein for a morning of fun, games, prizes and story-telling to encourage a love of books and reading with the 229 grade Rs and 1s and their six teachers.
The activities were in line with the United Nation’s International Literacy Day 2019 theme of Literacy and Multilingualism and focused on three developmental areas – physical and cognitive development, and language. It also provided an opportunity to acknowledge 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.
In celebration of Arbour Month and to highlight the crucial value of trees in our environment, volunteers from Silverstar’s CSI team and Health & Safety Department collaborated with the Kagiso ECD Centre – a long-time beneficiary of Silverstar’s – to plant three trees on the school property on 19 September.
The Silverstar team explained the need for trees to the centre’s 115 learners and involved them in the planting process with the aim of encouraging ownership of and care for the trees. The children learnt that trees produce oxygen while using up carbon dioxide, air pollution can be filtered by trees, soil is conserved by trees, and that trees are beautiful and provide shade.
For South Africa’s Older Persons Week, which took place from 30 September to 6 October and incorporated the United Nations International Day of Older Persons on 1 October, Silverstar donated a container to Lusaka Gogos in Swaneville near Krugersdorp. The Lusaka Gogos is a community initiative aimed at empowering elderly women in Swaneville through activities such as exercise, needlework, knitting, and craftwork. The organisation has 20 active members who meet every day and twice a year host a market where their handmade items are sold. Funds raised are used to sustain the programmes and replenish consumables.
The 12m x 2.4m container provides a place for the women to meet, to work on their projects, to share and transfer skills, building purpose in their lives and giving them dignity. The new container offers much-needed space to implement the programmes officiated by the SAVG Môreglans Old Age Home, which also provides ongoing support to the Lusaka Gogos organisation. In addition, Silverstar donated wool and knitting and crochet needles to the women’s group.
Older Persons Week highlights the fact that older people enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Constitution, particularly the right to have their dignity respected. This year’s theme was ‘Grandparents are pillars of families.
In recognition of UNICEF’s International Day of the Girl Child Silverstar donated reusable Palesa Pads Starter Flo Kits to 652 girls at Thathulwazi WR High School in Krugersdorp in October to ensure that the girls will not have to miss school during their menstrual cycles due to limited or no access to sanitary products. Each kit contains six sanitary towels, cleaning materials to wash the pads, and a bucket.
The casino is also sponsoring an exciting end of year party for 240 children and 58 teachers of Itireleng Special School for children with severe intellectual disability (SID), as well as 30 volunteers at Kloofendal Nature Reserve on 29 November. Silverstar is providing transport, catering, entertainment, and gifts for the children.
Anneke Potgieter, Silverstar’s Operations Director and Complex GM, says Silverstar’s culture of community caring is continuing to strengthen, with staff volunteers investing resources and time in a range of activities. “As Silverstar we consider ourselves to be an integral part of this community and we support it wherever we can, with an emphasis on contributing to brighter futures. By participating in awareness days, we highlight the messages and show our caring spirit with playing, reading, engaging, planting, and donating – always in collaboration with the people, schools and organisations in our area.”
She adds, “Times are tough for many in our community, and we remain committed to being inspired to working together with members of our community to continuously assist where we can to make life a little brighter and a little easier.”
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