Jet honours Namibia and Botswana's community heroes

Namibia and Botswana's community heroes were celebrated alongside those from Gauteng and the North West province who were announced at the same event. Representatives from the winning community organisations shared their celebrations with Jet shoppers and other local community members and were applauded for their inspirational contributions to social upliftment.

Now in its sixth year, the Jet Community Awards invites entries from anyone who has contributed to the well-being of their community in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. The awards recognise community projects and organisations in the categories of Education, honouring organisations and individuals focusing on school-level programmes of excellence in literacy, maths, science and technology, Environmental Waste Management, recognising organisations that focus on reducing or eliminating waste, We Care, recognising inspirational community initiatives in healthcare, Early Childhood Development (ECD), Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) as well as initiatives with people with disabilities and Vukuzenzele which recognises entrepreneurs among black women, youths and in small rural enterprises.

Jet Club manager, Tessa Lloyd says the awards are going from strength to strength as more and more South Africans make individual contributions to social transformation at a grassroots level. “To ensure that we're selecting winners who are genuinely benefiting their local communities and who have the ability to sustain their impact we send out verification teams to visit all short-listed projects. We sincerely congratulate our remarkable winners for their efforts to transform the communities they live in for the better. They are tireless individuals who have little or no support and seldom any specialist education which makes their efforts all the more extraordinary.”

Chosen from many worthy entries the Namibia and Botswana regional winners are the Solidarity Community Care Organisation from Windhoek, Namibia (We Care Healthcare), Usko Nghaamwa Pre-school for the Deaf from Eenhana, Namibia (We Care Disabilities), APF Glo Investments in Francistown, Botswana (Vukuzenzele Women), A re yeng Basadi Bakery in Tonota, Botswana (Vukuzenzele Small Enterprise) and Donny's Airport Transfers from Windhoek, Namibia (Vukuzenzele Youth). No awards were made in the Environmental Waste Management and Education categories.

Since the launch of the awards in 2003, there has been such an enthusiastic response at a community level that Jet has continually increased its investment in the programme to the point where there is now more than R1m in prize money on offer, which is all re-invested into worthy community initiatives. The Gauteng event was the first of five regional events in the lead up to the final event in October at which the overall winners in each category will be announced. Each regional category winner receives R15,000 in prize money and becomes eligible for the final event at which seven overall winners each receive R75,000 prize money and R1,000 in Jet shopping vouchers.