Our commitment

Corporate Social Investment
Corporate social responsibility, our interaction with businesses, government and the community at large, in order to create a sustainable environment, is critical to our overall business strategy.

Our CSR strategy
Integrating the principles of sustainability into our core business operations, the three core elements of our CSR strategy are:

  • Preferential procurement & enterprise development
  • Contributing to procurement and enterprise development through co-operative ventures with black business organisations and procurement from black-owned and black-managed suppliers.

Employment equity
Creating equal employment opportunities for all our people Transferring skills and complying with the Employment Equity Act and Corporate social investment. – focusing on education and business skills development to accelerate growth, create employment and encourage economic contribution by communities that were previously disadvantaged.

The Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) Board
The CSR Board provides oversight to our social responsibility programme and initiatives, governing policies and offering an external perspective on issues of sustainability. It enjoys all the necessary powers and authority to execute the role entrusted to it by our Executive Committee.
The board comprises 11 members of whom four are external independent persons.

Addressing Sustainability.
Why is sustainability important for a firm like PricewaterhouseCoopers?
“For us, sustainability is a strategic business issue.”

What is sustainable development?
Our view of sustainability is built on our core values, our industry-focused services and our investment in our people and in the country Sustainability is a strategic business issue which takes more than a strong bottom line to maintain. It means meeting society’s expectations of added social, environmental and economic value from our operations, products and services.

For PricewaterhouseCoopers, sustainability means ensuring that we remain a viable business in the foreseeable future.

The spate of corporate governance scandals, locally and abroad, has focused attention on the sustainability of business, and its accountability. The sustainability issues these corporate governance scandals touched on, are related to the behaviour of board directors and their patent lack of respect for their employees, shareholders and wider stakeholders. One can see the effects that such behaviour has: bankruptcy and job loss. In other words the economic and social pillars of sustainability are shaken, thus upsetting the balance.

“Our sustainability is built on our core values, our industry-focused services and our investment in our people.”

The professional challenges
The challenges that we and the rest of the accounting profession face, include:
  • Rebuilding public trust;
  • Continuing to embed the principles of corporate social responsibility in all our business practices; and
  • Promoting accountability, integrity and transparency.

Our corporate sustainability strategy
We have formalised a corporate sustainability strategy in terms of which we commit to:
  • Being a truly South African organisation reflecting the demographics of our country;
  • Developing services relevant to our markets, that assist clients in integrating sustainability into their core business functions; and
  • Enhancing our public profile as a firm that really makes a difference. “Our sustainability is built on our core values, our industry-focused services and our investment in our people.” In these endeavours we are guided by our core values of Teamwork, Leadership and Excellence, which support and infuse our actions and interactions with our external stakeholders and, internally, with each other.

CSR Focus Areas
Our sustainability strategy focuses on three broad areas:
  • High impact initiatives that contribute to Africa’s development:
    Working with Government, industry and other stakeholders on issues such as promoting corporate governance, job creation and regulatory enhancements.
  • Skills development:
    Which includes equipping our people, and the people of our country with the necessary skills to make a positive contribution to the future growth of our economy.
  • Community upliftment projects:
    Giving of our time and resources to assist communities or identified recipients, for instance donations of food or blankets, Christmas parties for underprivileged children etc. You could get involved in some of these exciting projects!
Corporate Social Responsibility

Making a positive difference

Given the nature of our business, our corporate social investment (CSI) strategy’s key focus is on education and skills development. This addresses some of the social challenges that the country faces, such as poverty, unemployment and HIV/AIDS. Our staff have been at the forefront of initiating community upliftment projects that have attempted to meet the basic needs of the communities around us.


Our community investment

CIDA City Campus
CIDA City Campus offers talented students from disadvantaged communities a chance to prepare for a career. It receives strong support from the business community, including PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Vulamasango Secondary School
We will be contributing over R1 million rand to Vulamasango over the next two years, both financially and by way of productive time. This includes creating an awareness of the profession, presenting extra accounting lessons, identifying life skills needed by learners, job shadowing and business orientation opportunities, presenting entrepreneurship awareness courses, and general career guidance.

Bursary allocation
Over the past four years we have awarded bursaries amounting to approximately R34 million to 245 students from disadvantaged communities intending to pursue a career as chartered accountants.

Business Orientation Programme
This initiative exposes black learners and students to the business of PricewaterhouseCoopers and other companies with whom we do business.

Thutuka initiative
The Thuthuka project is an initiative by SAICA to replace the CA’s Eden Trust. Its objective is to increase the number of qualified black and coloured chartered accountants in the country. Thuthuka initiatives will take place at a number of levels, from schools, to undergraduate and post-graduate initiatives. Through Thuthuka, 250 or more bursaried students will be placed with selected educational institutions from 2005 onwards. PricewaterhouseCoopers has undertaken to support the Thuthuka bursary fund and will be actively involved in the selection and sponsorship of Thuthuka students from 2005 onwards.

Presentations to learners at schools
Presentations to learners at schools aimed at improving their understanding of the accounting and auditing profession, with a view to enabling them to make informed choices when selecting a future career, and obviously to growing the pool of chartered accountants from previously disadvantaged communities. We also provide capacity building for accounting and finance educators, enabling them to pass this knowledge on to learners.

The Aha-Thuto Secondary School
The Aha-Thuto Secondary School is located in a township south of Johannesburg. Like other township schools in South Africa, Aha-Thuto needed assistance with both financial and human resources. Since we partnered with the school, the tides have turned and the learners have been given hope for a brighter future. This is evident in their impressive 86% matric pass rate in 2003, considered high for a school in such an area. Initially, we funded the renovation of the school’s library and awarded a bursary to a student (see the case study that follows). We continuously expose the learners to the accounting profession and the business world in general through our job shadowing and Business Orientation Programme (BOP), as well as assisting the grade 11 and 12 learners with extra accounting lessons.

The Siyabona Education Trust
“Ready for Business” programme was established in 1998 in Port Elizabeth and designed to expose selected high school learners (Grade 11 and 12) from disadvantaged backgrounds to basic business concepts. These concepts form the foundation for more advanced tertiary.