Continental employees support relief programme

31 Oct 2013

Continental Tyre South Africa (CTSA) employees at the Port Elizabeth tyre plant recently volunteered to package meals for Stop Hunger Now to coincide with Hunger Awareness month. Volunteers in this humanitarian relief programme packaged and distributed dried food like rice, soya and soup mix to disadvantaged communities.

Scooping the ingredients for Team Number Crunchers. (L-R) Fazlin Loonat (left front). Klululwa Bloko, Colin Fish, Claudina Ah-Chong, Noluvuyo Kata and Susan van Hansen

Divided into four teams, namely Team Production, Team Engineering, Team Technical and Team Number Crunchers, the employees packed 25,920 meals valued at R72,000 in just three hours. "This employee engagement project involved colleagues across all departments and encouraged teamwork, while creating meaning," said Gishma Johnson, Corporate Communications manager.

She added that employees nominated organisations, especially those who ran soup kitchens and feeding schemes in Nelson Mandela Bay as beneficiaries of the food. "Each team was made up of 60 volunteers and included executives, senior managers and shop floor operators with tight competition between the teams."

Neatness and accuracy

The teams were judged according to specific criteria namely the order in which they finish, the neatness factor and the accuracy factor. "Our teams were highly competitive and showed great team spirit," said Johnson.

At the end Team Technical came out tops, scoring the highest points. This team had a consistent score throughout the competition in terms of no waste and received full points for all three rounds. The team leader, Hugh Schambreel, who is a quality engineering manager at the plant, says his team started off slowly, but gradually built momentum. "We made sure the quality was correct first and thereafter picked up speed."

CTSA had Jimmy Tau, former Bafana Bafana defender and Gcobani Bobo, former Springbok centre as special guests who joined employees in the event. These two celebrities are also getting ready to participate in the company's marketing initiative, Run2Stop, in November.