Community Involvement
Read Hope Phillips recognises its commitment to the wider community. It does so through charitable donations and community support.
Entrepreneur support
Read Hope Phillips has an entrepreneur support programme which provides legal assistance on a pro bono basis to emerging entrepreneurs. The aim is to assist new entrepreneurs to establish their businesses on a sound legal footing. Some of the beneficiaries of the programme have become successful business people and clients of Read Hope Phillips in their own right.
Environmental
Read Hope Phillips is a corporate member of and legal advisor to The Bateleurs, an environmental NGO, whose members are pilots and flying enthusiasts and who assist other stakeholders in providing aircraft and pilots for conservation projects. Andrew Cadman is an executive committee member of the Bateleurs.
Charitable causes
Read Hope Phillips is conscious of its status as a repository of valued skills in a society struggling to overcome deep inequality and division. In supporting social initiatives and in its pro bono work, Read Hope Phillips hopes to support the development of sustainable community-based organisations and the empowerment of local communities.
Booysens Amateur Boxing Club
Since 1929 the Club has been active in coaching boxing and self-defence to school boys from the age of eight years and older. It has members from all areas of Gauteng and currently has around 75 members predominantly from lower income groups. The committee members are working people and give up a lot of their time for the love of boxing, without reward.
DreamFields
“When I play soccer, I feel joy inside.” Those words from Lebogang, a matric student in Tshisahulu village in Venda, sum up what the Dreamfields Project is all about. Since its launch in October 2007, it has been working flat out to spread that joy — and many people, ranging from corporations, to small companies, to kids with huge hearts, are helping it to do that.
www.dreamfieldsproject.org/ourdream.aspx
- DreamBags provides schools with a complete set of kit including boots - everything a team needs to walk out onto the field, ready to take on the world
- DreamEvents brings schools, sponsors and the community together for a tournament, an exhilarating all-day celebration of the power of soccer to inspire the best in all of us
- DreamFields represents renewed spaces for young people to play — not just restored soccer fields, but symbols of what communities and their partners can achieve by working together.
Cotlands
In partnership with other NGOs, local government and the private sector, Cotlands is committed to filling the medico-socio-economic gaps in communities by providing services that will ensure the provision of food security, reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, create jobs and foster self-sustainability. To achieve this, Cotlands has ensured that all its outreach projects include food garden initiatives, income generating projects and educational components.
Hospice
Hospice provides care to meet the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of patients and families facing life-threatening illness. The focus of the care provided is palliative. The areas covered include Midrand, Alberton, Soweto, Alexandra and greater Johannesburg. Within an atmosphere of care and compassion, Hospice offers palliative care service that focuses on the quality of life, promoting physical and psychosocial well-being for people with active, progressive and advanced diseases for whom the prognosis is limited. This is achieved by providing holistic palliative care and support services, including training and education to patients, their families and care givers in the greater Johannesburg and Soweto areas.
www.hospicepalliativecaresa.co.za
Making local government work
Along with civil society groups, including SECTION27, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI-SA) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Read Hope Phillips is co-author of the advocacy booklet “Making Local Government Work – an activist’s guide” which is aimed at informing ordinary people about their constitutional and legal rights and empowering them to realise these rights.