Gregory Venter LinkedIn Post

The world can be a tough place as life isn’t always rosy, so it’s very important to always discharge that positive energy that can uplift others around you. And there is no better example of the goodness in our world than random acts of kindness, be it to a stranger, a family, a charity or a community at large.

Kind hearted people who are helpful for no reason other than them being good people can truly champion society’s hope in humanity – we better know it as ‘Ubuntu’ in South Africa. As you peruse through my piece today, something will become very clear – regardless of how much money or time we have – we all have it within us to make a significant impact on others and help make the world a better place.

At Goscor Cleaning Equipment (GCE), one of the strongest and best qualities of our company and its employees (we are actually more than that, we are a family) is generosity. I love working with such amazing people with such big hearts! This quality is rooted in our belief that as a business – which is made up of people who hail from the societies that we operate in – we can play a part in building a society we want to live in.

At GCE, we are more than just a business, we are an active citizen. This is motivated by our desire to contribute meaningfully to communities around us. It’s something within us that we regard our business activities as never separate from society, but inextricably bound to the fortunes of it. Apart from creating jobs, offering goods, services and processes, as well as investing in the skills of our employees, we have always gone the extra mile to make a difference in societies that we operate in.

A case in point is our recent involvement with the FNB Run Your City Series races. Driven by our desire to maintain clean streets in communities where we operate, GCE recently deployed resources to help clean Johannesburg CBD streets ahead of the FNB Joburg 10K CITYRUN. We also undertook the same initiative ahead of the FNB Cape Town 12 ONERUN, which took place in May this year. We also recently embarked on a same initiative ahead of the FNB Durban 10K CITYSURFRUN which took place on the 14^th of October this year.

Not only does this street cleaning initiative improve the aesthetics of the city, but it reduces the risk of accidents. Clearing the streets of debris minimises slip and fall accidents, as well as protecting people from dangerous garbage like rusty nails and broken glass, not forgetting the ever-dangerous banana peels!

Meanwhile, like we always do, this year we also invested time and resources towards a worthy cause during a special day in our South African calendar, Mandela Day. Nelson Mandela’s famous words, “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others”, remind us that as a nation, companies and individuals, we have to extend a loving and kind hand. It is in this spirit that we partnered Wollies animal shelter to make a difference to the lives of abandoned animals at the shelter.

In conclusion, I believe that it is very much in the interests of any company to be a good corporate citizen. There is no set definition of corporate citizenship; in my view it should take sustainable development as its starting point; that is to say, efforts to unify economic, social and environmental development. These efforts involve every section of society, and therefore good corporate citizenship is the way in which businesses work towards sustainable development of communities.