The trauma unit deals with approximately 75 000 patients each year.

The maternity unit is extremely underequipped, unable to provide some of the basic healthcare services because they simply lack the tools to do so. The maternity unit had over 8200 births in 2012, 1552 of these landed up in Neonatal and without the necessary equipment, the baby mortality rate is high.

“When we heard the stories – that mothers have to birth on the floor – we knew that we had to do something to help,” says Nancy Gaylard, the training manager at the Hotel.“They approached us when I had just had my baby, and we decided to help with the most expensive item on their wish list to help make a difference in a unit that needed assistance desperately.”
“We support a school, two orphanages and a foster home,” says Gaylard. “We always look for institutions where there is great need, but not a lot of donor interest, so that we can really make a difference. We also have a strong focus on uplifting or supporting women, which is very important to us.”

One of the other projects that they support is the Banakelkeleni HIV Aids Orphanage in Alexandra. The orphanage is home to 21 children aged two to 18, and runs a day care for an additional 19 children from underprivileged homes.

“There is no funding for the women who run the orphanage,” says Gaylard. “They haven’t taken a salary since 2010, so we do what we can to make their lives, and the lives of those that they look after, easier.”

The hotel donates foods and does maintenance at Banakelkeleni and the other institutions it supports. It is ideally positioned to provide expertise and materials for renovations through its network of contractors and suppliers, and engages them at its own expense to make a difference at these locations.

But CSI at the hotel isn’t just a top-down initiative. Many of the staff are fully engaged in supporting the charities that management have earmarked. “We’re lucky to have genuinely caring staff,” says Gaylard. “They go beyond what is required of them, and give of their own time to support our charities.”

The hotel’s assistant maintenance manager, Peter TT, who was exposed to one of the children’s homes through the CSI work, has taken it upon himself to visit the charity and do repairs in his own time, wanting to take personal ownership of the project as well. Another of their staff fosters children herself.

“As an organisation with a service culture, we’re proud that we are able to show through our CSI activities that caring is an integral part of who we are, it’s not just a façade we put up for our guests,” says Gaylard.

The hotel also offers an internship programme for children who have left the orphanages, to equip them with skills in the hospitality industry and create future employment for them.