Corporate social responsibility needs to be generational to create true impact

“The greatest test we face in corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the ability to do things sustainably and at scale.”

“Sustainably because (sadly) the many one-off donations we see are most likely NOT going to create any real impact.”

“At scale because we cannot for one moment turn a blind eye to the immense needs that all require support across our country.”

“The unintended consequence is that this 'play to the optics' approach effectively creates dependency, not capacity.”

“CSR is in fact the most direct connection between companies like Ford, its consumers and those who live and work around us.”

“It is one thing to say Ford represents 1% of South African GDP, and another to talk about the impact on the more than 30,000 pupils to date who have benefited from our interventions just in a programme like Rally to Read.”

“Since 2019 alone we have delivered more than 35,000 books to 32 identified schools in Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng.”

“This programme employs these teaching assistants to create capacity in the educational structure of these schools and their teachers and pupils.”

“At its core, Rally to Read targets early childhood development (ECD) and foundation-phase literacy (in grades R to 3), recognising that reading proficiency in the early years of school is the single-greatest predictor of long-term academic success, economic participation and generational poverty reduction.”

“The Department of Basic Education currently emphasises the critical period from birth to five years, broader policy definitions often span from birth to nine years to align with the foundational years of schooling. This programme extends this reach to also include intermediate-stage pupils in grades 4 to 7.”

“Developmental economists and education researchers broadly agree that the most cost-effective educational interventions occur in the first 1,000 days of life and during the foundation phase.”

“South African researchers at bodies like the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town have produced complementary local evidence, which builds on his original findings.”

“Children who benefited from Rally to Read in its early years are now parents themselves. A child who learnt to love reading in a Ford-supported school then, is an adult today. If this programme shaped their relationship with literacy, they are statistically more likely to read to their own children.”

“Rally to Read is not Ford’s programme. It belongs to the teachers who were trained by it, the children who were shaped by it and the parents (themselves once six-year-olds holding their first book)”

“Interventions at these stages have been shown to produce higher secondary school completion rates, greater tertiary participation, higher lifetime earnings, lower rates of criminal involvement and real influence in lifting poorer communities out of the poverty cycle.”

“Rally to Read operates precisely in this space. Through this long-term partnership, Ford is intervening at the moment of maximum neurological influence and maximum return on educational investment.”

“The most prominent and rigorously credentialled developmental economist to cite in this context is Professor James Heckman, the 2000 Nobel Prize laureate in economics.”