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Maths Centre. 
Maths Centre. 
Some of the children that
attended the ODIs. 
Standard Bank Joy of Jazz
in Mpumalanga held at Nelspruit Showgrounds. 
Sparrow Ministeries
Our CSI programme is focused on eight main development
areas: education; entrepreneurship; sport development;
community development; health; heritage; arts
and culture and bursaries. In the areas of sports
development, arts and culture, and heritage, we
ensure that a developmental component is included
as a part of our traditional commercial programmes.
Standard Bank is active, largely through sponsorship,
in arts, sport and heritage activities. While
the commercial agenda remains within the realm
of marketing and sponsorship, important developmental
opportunities frequently arise and are embraced
to benefit target communities or social groups.
Education
Our educational initiatives have two important themes:
financial literacy, and mathematics and science
education. We support a diverse cross-section of
these projects, including the well-established Liberty
Learning Channel, Mindset, financial literacy education,
a national newspaper initiative and projects aimed
at stimulating a higher appreciation and understanding
of mathematics and science.
Liberty
Learning Channel
Standard Bank maintains a formal partnership with
Liberty Life and the South African Broadcasting
Corporation (SABC) in enabling the Liberty Learning
Channel to televise maths and science lessons to
schoolchildren across South Africa.
Mindset Network
Standard Bank is a founding partner of the Mindset
Network, a project that delivers distance education
to schools through television-based technology.
We are actively involved in strategically planning
and developing content for this project. Together
with other private-sector partners, this initiative
promises to have a far-reaching influence on the
quality of education delivered to rural schools.
The Mindset platform is also used to broadcast financial
literacy content.
Financial literacy
In 1999, Standard Bank piloted its financial literacy
project by developing and distributing learning
material to more than 50 000 Gauteng grade-seven
learners. The workbooks, posters and training videos
offered advice on economics, personal finance, savings
and investments, banking products and services,
and business finance. Due to its success, the programme
was extended to other provinces and now also includes
learning material for grade-eight and grade-nine
learners.
To date, we have committed more than R10,5 million
per annum to developing and providing resources
to nearly one million learners in about 10 000
schools across South Africa. We are currently
leveraging our relationship with Mindset to extend
the project’s benefits and, through the
formation of a public-private partnership, we
intend reaching every South African school by
2009.
Mathematics and science
We have also committed financial and other resources
to several other maths and science education projects.
For example, through our ongoing relationship with
the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg,
we helped to establish a new centre dedicated to
teacher intervention programmes in maths and science.
Through our existing three-year partnership, the
university and the bank will bring teachers from
around South Africa to the centre for further training
and accreditation in maths and science education.
The nationwide Mathematics Centre for Professional
Teachers (MCPT) focuses on training teachers to
enhance their classroom techniques and their understanding
and application of the school curriculum. There
are strong tracking and benchmarking processes
in place to provide a measure of success and to
extract lessons from the developmental process.
Entrepreneurship
We have, for many years, supported entrepreneurial
development in South Africa, especially in underresourced
or less privileged communities. In future we will
be intensifying our efforts to keep entrepreneurial
development aligned with the charter.
The core element of our entrepreneurship programme
is to provide capacity building for SMEs. Key
components of this programme are to provide financial
and business management skills. This is also integrated
with our group-wide strategy of helping support
and empower SMMEs.
Our intervention targets existing SMMEs that
project partners regard as having the potential
to become formal and established businesses. The
SMME owners are assessed and then provided with
comprehensive training and support in such disciplines
as business planning, financial and cash-flow
management, and in understanding and adhering
to tax and human capital management obligations.
We are maintaining partnerships for SMME owner
training with the University of Port Elizabeth’s
Small Business Unit and eThekwini Municipality
in KwaZulu-Natal.
Community development and health
Our health projects emphasise the continuing need
to provide broad-based healthcare and public awareness
on health-related issues. We support a range of
projects that focus on meeting the challenges posed
by the HIV/Aids pandemic, tuberculosis and primary
healthcare.
Looking ahead, we intend to identify and support
a large, more centrally run project in the healthcare
field to ensure greater national reach and therefore
greater benefits.
Sport development
In 2004 we spent R1,2 million on sport development
in South Africa, primarily by supporting children
from communities that were previously excluded from
an opportunity to excel at sport.
We complement our sponsorship of the South African
limited-over cricket team by sponsoring the development
and maintenance of cricket coaching and playing
facilities in underdeveloped communities in partnership
with the South African Cricket Board (SACB) under
the banner of the Legacy Programme.
Arts and culture
We are one of the four main sponsors of the National
Arts Festival in Grahamstown, in conjunction with
the Eastern Cape Provincial Government, The National
Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund and the SABC.
The annual Standard Bank Young Artists Awards form
part of the festival programme. We also sponsor
the Standard Bank National Schools’ Festival.
Our art gallery in central Johannesburg remains
a platform for exhibiting paintings, sculptures
and other works of art produced by leading South
African and international artists. We continue
to support South African artists by purchasing
original artworks for our art collection. Our
African art collection, housed at the University
of the Witwatersrand, continues to receive an
annual grant for the purchase of new artwork.
The jazz festivals, held in various South African
cities during the year, attracted many jazz enthusiasts.
These festivals provide a platform for promoting
both established and emerging jazz musicians.
In 2004, about R1 million was spent in support
of jazz development. Other music sponsorships
included the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra,
Buskaid and the Alexandra Music Project.
Heritage
Origins of humankind
We continue to sponsor palaeoanthropological research,
education and conservation in Gauteng by sponsoring
the Palaeoanthropological Scientific Trust (Past)
through our annual contribution of R700 000. This
sponsorship will continue until 2007.
Robben Island Education Centre
The bank is one of the partners in the Robben Island
project and contributes R1 million annually
to the Robben Island Education Centre. This sponsorship
will continue until 2007.
Environmental education
We support the World Wildlife Fund’s Educating
for Sustainability Programme, which focuses on using
permaculture practices as a model to develop knowledge,
awareness and skills on a variety of environmental
issues.
The programme also contributes to schools’
feeding schemes and food security by providing
local communities with necessary skills to establish
home-based gardens. The foundation also supports
the Delta Environmental Centre’s schools
outreach programme that aims to educate and train
educators and learners. |
