Spier has developed Conference for Good packages, which means event planners who choose to host their events at Spier are also contributing to positive social and environmental projects. Here they share some of their favourite ones.
Creating opportunities for the youth
Spier has a number of wide-ranging Growing for Good learning initiatives, which its clients support indirectly. These include:
- A partnership with Harambee, an NPO that sources, trains and places unemployed young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into their first jobs;
- Being a participating employer in the Pinotage Youth Development Academy, which educates and employs disadvantaged youth in the wine industry;
- Supporting Tree-preneurs, a project which teaches people from impoverished communities how to grow and care for indigenous plants. Once the seedling plants are big enough, they can be traded with Spier for much-needed items such as food vouchers, clothing and bicycles.
Aside from these established projects, Spier has also enabled some creative partnerships between its conferencing clients and its social upliftment projects.
Facilitating business opportunities
“For maximum impact, we realise that we can’t act alone, though. Over the last year, a number of conferencing clients have collaborated with us to make an even bigger difference,” a press release issued by Spier says.
For example, Allan Gray removed 800 desk bins from its V&A Waterfront head office in order to encourage the staff to use the designated waste separation bins – a change which will boost the office’s recycling rates. The bins will be given to the Tree-preneurs nursery for potting seedlings.
Crafters at the Spier Craft Market have also benefited from business opportunities with Spier’s conference clients. When Avon’s Wendy Shenker visited the market, she fell in love with Maria Sikinya’s safety pin and bead necklaces, which are made with recycled paper. Shenker commissioned Sikinya to make 300 necklaces using old Avon brochures and catalogues, which were then gifted to delegates at an Avon conference. Corrinne Erasmus, another crafter at the market, created special handmade paper origami boxes for the necklaces. These jobs supported a number of short-term income generating opportunities, to make the paper beads and packing boxes, which provided a big financial boost to the crafters involved.
Encouraging pack for a purpose
Another project that Spier has been supporting is the Pack for a Purpose campaign. Hotel guests and conference delegates are invited to donate much-needed items for community projects, such as the non-profit Zandvliet Care Facility which cares for the 150 frail, elderly or intellectually disabled individuals (most of who do not have sufficient family support to care for them).
One event alone, hosted for those in the travel and conferencing sector, resulted in hundreds of much-needed items being donated to Zandvliet – including adult nappies, bars of soap, combs, toothpaste, deodorants, etc.
