RHS believes that we have an opportunity and responsibility to play a role in helping solve South Africa’s challenges and acknowledges that we are only at the beginning of this journey. In a country facing countless economic, social and environmental challenges, RHS is committed to sustainable growth and to fostering positive change in the communities we live and work in.
Our approach to social responsibility includes empowering our people to give back to their communities, so that our drive to do good is led by our people.
We dedicate a percentage of our time to giving back, thereby enabling our employees to participate in community initiatives for causes that are close to their hearts. In this way, the RHS teams come together to positively impact our wider communicates.
A great example of this is the RHS-managed Sudwala Lodge team’s ongoing initiatives to impact the youth from the local communities in their area.
It all started 4 years ago when the team became concerned about the safety of the local children – who were waiting for, and being collected and dropped off by, the school bus – on the main road. Their concern led the team to arrange with the community that Sudwala would provide a safe waiting area for the children on the Lodge premises; and would also allow the bus driver to park the bus securely on the premises overnight, ongoing. With this, the relationship started.
It has now become a regular event for the resort staff to gift the children with items such as food parcels, lunch boxes, gloves, scarves and jackets.
This year, for Youth Day, the staff collected funds and generously made donations from their own income, in order to give the children a special school lunch treat. Preparations started ahead of 16 June 2021, to ensure they had all the goodies needed on hand and could prepare and pack the lunches – which included a sandwich, an apple, a fruit juice box, a sucker and a homemade muffin – the day before. This enabled the team to get an early start the next morning, on an extremely cold Lowveld day, in order to intercept the bus and surprise the children the day before Youth Day.
By all accounts, the children were both surprised and delighted and the team loved knowing that there would be no hungry tummies at school that day.