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| 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. |
PricewaterhouseCoopers was one of the first companies to support CIDA City Campus after its founding in 1999. As early as March 2000, Deputy CEO Suresh Kana contacted CIDA’s CEO Taddy Blecher, to talk about the form our involvement would take. We ultimately decided to found the School of Accounting within the college. It accepted its first 50 students last year.
As part of our support for the School of Accounting, the firm has about 75 employees developing the curriculum and delivering and presenting accounting and auditing lessons, in addition to their normal job responsibilities.
We also invite the students to our offices, giving them an opportunity to experience the accounting environment, interact with our staff and management, and engage with experts from business units other than auditing and accounting.
The firm is working together with SAICA to ensure that its standards of education and delivery are not compromised. Our relationship with the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) ensures that the students in the School of Accounting acquire their CA qualifi cation following their four-year stay at CIDA.
Over the past 18 months PricewaterhouseCoopers has invested 5 000 hours in CIDA, worth R1,8 million. The lecturers’ enthusiasm and the students’ willingness to learn contribute to CIDA’s success as a model for higher education.
| Vulamasango Secondary School |
| – We will be contributing over R1 million rand to Vulamasango over the next two years, both fi nancially 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 undertaken by SAICA to replace the CA’s Eden Trust. Its objective is to increase the throughput and number of qualifi ed 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 fi nance 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 fi nancial 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 now continuously expose the learners to the accounting profession and the business world in general through our job shadowing and Business Orientation Programme (BOP), and assist 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 studies in the BCom direction. Seven staff members from PricewaterhouseCoopers presented the programme to learners. |
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