On Tuesday, 5 July, Vodacom revealed 20 fascinating volunteers drawn from across South Africa’s nine provinces, who will take part in the 2016 edition of Vodacom Change the World (VCtW). These volunteers traded their jobs to plough back their skills in Non-Profit Organisations (NPO) for a year, to touch the lives of ordinary people and help bolster the good work NPOs are doing in the country.

Change the World is part of Vodafone’s ‘World of Difference’ programme that is run in more than 19 countries around the globe. The initiative underscores the importance of partnerships between the private sector and NPOs in the pursuit of the common goal of building a better life for all.  This is the sixth year that VCtW will be running in South Africa.

The quality of candidates that this programme continues to attract shows that there are many South African professionals out there who are yearning to invest their skills to transform local NPOs.

– Maya Makanjee, Chief Officer Corporate Affairs at Vodacom

Maya Makanjee, Chief Officer Corporate Affairs at Vodacom explained: 'We are proud of the work we’ve done in this country through the CtW programme to encourage and stimulate the culture of volunteerism. These 20 volunteers, including one Vodacom staff member, have been selected from more than 5 000 entries. To show that we put our money where our mouth is, to date we’ve spent more than R35 million on project funds, salaries and grants to the NPOs.'  

Including this group, a total of 82 volunteers have worked at different charities across the country since 2010, delivering more than 100 projects. They are medical doctors, lawyers, marketers, social workers, psychologists and speech and occupational therapists. The work they will be doing for the next 12 months will impact people’s lives in areas such as Kliptown in Soweto, Khayelitsha in Cape Town, Mdantsane near East London, Upington, Hartswater, Hoedspruit and Sweetwaters, to mention a few.

'The quality of candidates that this programme continues to attract shows that there are many South African professionals out there who are yearning to invest their skills to transform local NPOs. VCtW was set out with this purpose in mind, for professionals to utilise their skills to reach-out to NPOs in order to turn them around so they can be sustainable and impactful,' Makanjee concluded.