Pietermaritzburg businessmen were teeing for the green in more ways than one at the Victoria Country Club recently. Members of the newly launched Keeping Our Planet in Business network and their friends and colleagues participated in a golf day to raise awareness for conservation. The network was started by local non-profit the Wildlands Conservation Trust to raise funds for conservation and to increase the participation of Pietermaritzburg businesses in local projects.
Wildlands’ work relies on the ability to build partnerships across all sectors and so they recently initiated the Keeping Our Planet in Business network. The campaign is centred around the establishment of local networks of businesses that support Wildlands’ vision and want to help. The roll-out of the campaign was piloted in Pietermaritzburg and is currently being expanded into Durban. Businesses who sign up are profiled through the network marketing activities and invited to network functions, like the recent golf day. Wildlands also assists businesses with maximising their donation-related tax and BBBEE benefits.
Wildlands has previously only run one project in the Pietermaritzburg area, in the Table Mountain community, but thanks to the increased support from local businesses will be starting their Indigenous Trees for Life Programme in the SWAPO and Sweetwater communities as well. Indigenous Trees for Life is aimed at greening communities and restoring degraded forests and at the same time uplifting poor and vulnerable children and adults. The ‘tree-preneurs’ grow indigenous trees from seed, care for the plants until they reach a certain height and then trade them back to Wildlands for food, clothes, bicycles, agricultural goods and even school and university fees. The trees they grow are then used for reforestation projects around the country.
Fifteen teams participated on the day with the Protea Hotel Imperial clinching the title. For the rest of the teams lucky draw prizes were drawn giving most players something to take home. Bob Martin from Rogue Steel won the raffle prize of two nights for four people at Midmar Dam sponsored by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. The other local businesses that supported the event by either taking part or donating services and prizes were: Afrox, Tiger Brands, Chubb Alarms, Imperial Hotel, Market Traders, Thabo’s Designs and Antique, Rogue Steel, Sharman and Campbell, Kwik-Fit Allandale, SAB, ABI, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, CCW Catering, NM Quantity Surveyors, Pam Golding, Trade & Investment KZN, Thembakonke Projects.
Top left – Team Protea Hotel Imperial; one of the founding members of the Pietermaritzburg KPB Network and overall winners of the day.
Centre – Urvashi Haridass, Pietermaritzburg’s KPB Network Manager with Matthew Kretzmann (Market Traders) who won a gift voucher for the longest drive. Market Traders joined the network from July 1st.
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)