A "Good" Year!

Being a big business based in a small town, we, at The Beekman Group, are keenly aware of our responsibility not only to our immediate community, but also to the extended South African population that makes up our families, colleagues, friends, and neighbours.

With that in mind, we’ve made a habit, over the years, of engaging in as many Social Responsibility projects as we have the capacity to do, across as wide a range of causes as possible.

Here are just some of the ways we stayed engaged in our community this year:

Making a Difference In Children’s lives:

The Give a Child a Family Charity Drive is a heartwarming initiative aimed at making the lives of vulnerable children better. The staff at our Head Office in Port Shepstone showed up to collect boxes of clothing and dozens of teddies for the little ones.

Give a Child a Family is an organisation advocating for children growing up in secure families. Their ethos revolves around promoting children’s rights and ensuring their well-being is taken care of.

Creating Big Smiles With The Santa Shoebox Project

The Santa Shoebox project is a pivotal initiative that’s brought smiles to over 1,000,000 children since its inception. Every year, people decorate and fill a shoebox with gifts ranging from hygiene supplies to age-appropriate toys.

Beekman House is an authorised drop-off point, in the South Coast region. On the 29th and 30th of October, over 800 pledges were received from community members in the South Coast, and departments within the Beekman Group. In turn, the Group itself pledged 50 boxes, which is guaranteed to bring a number of wonderful smiles and joyful hearts to those who deserve them most.?

Rocking Our Socks For National Down Syndrome Day

In October staff members turned out to “rock their socks” and sported National Down Syndrome Day stickers on their breast pockets to raise awareness and promote the inclusivity of people living with Down syndrome. The Beekman Group sponsored the cost of stickers for all the staff at Head Office and the Resorts.

Down syndrome is a genetic condition which results from an extra copy of chromosome 21, which occurs during cell formation in pregnancy. In spite of the extra genetic material resulting in developmental changes and physical characteristics associated with this disorder, children and adults living with Down syndrome are no different from any other person and have their own, beautiful abilities, strengths, and personalities. It is for this reason that this day aims to reduce, with the hope of eliminating, discrimination against individuals with Down syndrome.

Raising Funds For Shelter Animals

In August a team of animal lovers, sponsored by the Beekman Group, participated in a fundraising drive organised by Kayak Trips.

The event was aimed at helping animals deserving of a loving owner, food, blankets, and medicine.

On the day of the drive, a team of kayakers made their way from Spillars Wharf, on the banks of the Umzimkhulu River on the South Coast, in a 6km race with the option of racing individually or in relays. Even though all the participants’ strength were put to the test, the Beekman Group’s kayaking representatives had no shortage of spunk, tenacity, and team spirit.

Movember!

Movember is an annual month-long event aimed at raising awareness about men's health issues, including prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and suicide among men. At the Beekman Group, people showed support by “growing a mo” in support of all men from 01st – 30th November 2022.

To add a little healthy competition, participants could win a prize for any of the categories such as, “The Biggest Mo", "The Most Creative Mo", and "The Most Stylish Mo". But, what was pleasantly surprising and especially heartwarming was the number of women who participated in the challenge this year!

A Hippo Worth of Donations!

The Beekman Group’s Annual SPCA Drive raised just over a whopping 1.6 tonnes of food, blankets and kitty litter for animals in need during the month of June. That’s equivalent to the weight of your average adult male hippopotamus!

Driven by the eager superstars in the training department, we ran a week-long drive among all the departments within our head office and several of our local resorts. Departments at head office raised money through various industrious means, from raffling off car-washes, pamper-hampers and tickets to uShaka Marine World, to selling fudge, and fresh popcorn (yes, from a real popcorn machine), all competing against each other for the bragging rights of being the biggest contributors to the company’s tally.

These are just a handful of the charitable and community initiatives driven by our head office and, most importantly, embraced by our staff in 2022, and why The Beekman Group was recognised for its exceptional contributions to Good Corporate Citizenship at the PMR.africa Business Excellence Awards in May.

“We do our best to identify social responsibility projects that demand the active participation of our staff, because year after year they seem to put more and more of themselves into these various causes, despite their workloads and commitments and it’s incredible to experience,” says Hannelie Millar, the Beekman Group Training & Development Manager.

“It speaks to the nature of people in our organisation to enjoy such an enthusiastic response to every community project we undertake, and we can’t wait to see how staff at both our head office and resorts step it up again in 2023.”

Happy Holidays!