Communities We Serve

Barloworld strives to be responsive to the needs of the communities in which it does business.  Corporate Social Investment (CSI) is viewed as an investment in the future, in the group’s people around the world and their various communities, and in the environmental sustainability of the planet.    

We are committed to allocating a minimum of 1% of our net profits after tax to CSI, a long term group approach which we believe represents international best practice on the part of companies which manage their businesses and their externalities, such as their impacts on the environment, in an ethical and responsible manner.

Over the past five years, the group has contributed R65 million to CSI/SED across all its operations.  Of this amount R33 million was verified SED spend in direct support of broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) in South Africa. 

Investments made are proportionate to the scale of Barloworld operations in a particular region. Since Barloworld has a significant presence in South and southern Africa, the extent of its CSI in this region is greater than in other parts of the world.  Group spend on CSI in 2012 was R17 million, R14 million of which was in South Africa.  In South and southern Africa, socio-economic development (SED) is incorporated into the group’s CSI programmes. 

There are two approaches to CSI/SED in the group:

A Barloworld Trust programme represents group operations across diverse industries and geographic locations, and attempts to address the foremost problems in society in a structural manner, one of its approaches being to support innovation in social service delivery which has the potential to be taken to scale by the public sector.  The group also strives to align with local or regional development objectives, and impact positively on public policies and systems through public participation, sharing its leadership expertise and business knowledge.

At operations level in the organisation, donations or CSI is aimed at addressing social causes take place, support being offered to a wide range of projects, NGO’s and charities, often with local community, industry, product or workplace linkages.  Both streams of CSI/SED in South Africa are managed against the SED objectives incorporated into the dti’s Codes of Good Practice on B-BBEE. 

Through volunteerism, employees are also encouraged to become involved in their communities through workplace team forums or individually.

Efforts focus on inspiring and encouraging strong, responsible leadership; improving the quality of teaching and learning in the education sector and improving access; practicing responsible environmental custodianship; and support of the vulnerable in society.
Because Barloworld believes the time is ripe for a bold, large-scale intervention with broad-based commitment and support which has the potential to begin to turn the education system in South Africa around, we have established a development partnership with the National Schools Partnership to Improve Learner Outcomes (NSP). The NSP is a broad-based coalition of stakeholders in education delivery and outcomes led by the Development Bank of SA.  It is focused on a programme of interventions based on the approaches to education system reform and upgrading advocated in the National Development Plan.  We have committed R1 million to the development of school management team training material for the NSP in 2013.