It’s impossible to fill the shoes of an icon like the late Nelson Mandela. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
As we mark Nelson Mandela International Day across the world today, 18 July, we have the chance to continue his work by making the world a better place for all those who live in it.
The Mandela Day initiative encourages people worldwide to honour the former statesman’s legacy through charity work and making life a little easier for the less fortunate through various acts of kindness – big and small – every day.
We at Flow strive to do what is in our power to honour his legacy and do our bit towards making the world a better place in some way.
Madiba once said, “Together as a nation, we have the obligation to put sunshine into the hearts of our little ones. They are our precious possessions. They deserve what happiness life can offer.”
Last year, Flow joined Maropeng, the official visitors’ centre of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site and one of our longstanding clients, in helping Maloney’s Eye Primary School how and when we can. Maloney’s Eye is a rural school situated about 12km from Maropeng, which supports the school as part of its official CSI programme. The school caters for a little over 300 children, who come from poverty-stricken communities in the area.
Flowstars contributed to purchasing and erecting a jungle gym in the school grounds, which was one of three Maropeng and some of its other suppliers donated to the school, which before that had no play equipment and only barren surroundings. We also helped the children at Maloney's Eye to celebrate Christmas in 2013, and recently helped the students plant a vegetable garden in their school grounds – Flow had raised funds from our own staff earlier in the year, which the school used to buy seedlings for the garden.
Flow also plays its part in helping save lives – throughout the year, we help the South African National Blood Service by hosting Flow Blood Drives and encouraging staff, friends, colleagues and family to donate blood. Donated blood goes to children with severe anaemia, accident victims and organ-donation recipients, among others. A unit of blood, which can be separated into plasma, red blood cells and platelets, has the potential to save three lives. We started this project as our Mandela Day project a few years back, and today it continues to grow with each blood drive.
Please keep an eye on our blog for details on the next blood drive and have a look at how much fun the very first blood drive as well as the last one was if you need a little inspiration to bleed with us.
At Flow, we are deeply privileged to work with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which is committed to preserving and sharing Madiba’s legacy. We first started working with the foundation as a communications partner in 2007, and over the years have produced many booklets about its work in encouraging dialogue about difficult subject matter, and we built and over the years have extended the foundation’s website, www.nelsonmandela.org. Recently, we launched a new and refreshed site for Nelson Mandela Day, www.mandeladay.com.
We were delighted to see the Mandela Day ‘Google doodle’ on Google’s homepage in 2014, dedicated to Nelson Mandela. We worked with Google in 2011 and 2012 to create the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive, a partnership project between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Google Cultural Institute, which helped to bring Mandela’s life, legacy and artefacts to life in a digital format.
We are privileged to play our part in honouring Madiba’s legacy. Every little bit helps.