During October, Rebuilding South Africa Together will be the focus of the annual Cares Month, a global community outreach programme spearheaded by legal technology company, LexisNexis South Africa, through its international parent company, the RELX Group.

RELX Cares Month encourages employees to play a positive role in their local communities and typically benefits charity organisations and NGOs. This year’s exercise in South Africa will extend the impact of recent LexisNexis South Africa initiatives aimed at supporting individuals and organisations impacted by the civil unrest in parts of the country earlier this year.  

Videsha Proothveerajh, LexisNexis South Africa CEO and Chairperson of the Board, explained, “In South Africa, Cares Month activities will see more than 600 employees nationally volunteer their time and skills to make a positive impact on society through collective volunteerism.

“Our employees care deeply about adhering to the highest standards of conduct and our teams will engage in community outreach to uplift others. A financial staff member who is also a writer has even penned a children’s book which deals with childhood trauma and proceeds will go towards a deserving NGO working in the childhood development space.” 

Cares Month’s Rebuilding South Africa Together activities include:

EduPower

LexisNexis is providing funding to EduPower, an accredited youth training provider that specialises in delivering quality B-BBEE solutions for Skills and Enterprise Development. LexisNexis will sponsor five entrepreneurship trailers, which will be donated to five vulnerable youth, affording them an opportunity to start their own business and start their entrepreneurial journey within their community.  EduPower is a LexisNexis Transformation partner that our Learning and Development unit has worked with for a number of years.

Learning in Reach

In line with the company’s purpose of Advancing the Rule of Law, the LexisNexis RefCheck team based in Cape Town will be offering free pre-employment verification checks to potential Early Childhood Development staff at the Learning in Reach organisation based in Cape Town. These checks will be offered to potential staff members of the organisation to ensure the safety and security of children in their care.

In addition to this, a LexisNexis employee and published author, Anira Pather, will be writing a children’s book aimed at helping children navigate through various circumstantial trauma. The professionally illustrated and printed book will focus on calming difficult feelings experienced by many of the vulnerable children of Lavender Hill. Proceeds of the book will go to Learning in Reach and 200 books will be donated and distributed to children in need in the Lavender Hill community.

KZN Network

KwaZulu-Natal was the province most severely impacted by the civil unrest and women and children were among those left most vulnerable. This year, LexisNexis will be supporting the KZN Network on Violence against Women to help create awareness around issues surrounding GBV (Gender Based Violence).  LexisNexis will partner with the KZN Network on various workshops and sessions that will assist communities to become violence free communities, understand their rights and encourage unity against GBV.

In addition, LexisNexis will be donating 75 food hampers to families that were recently affected by the unrest.       

As a company anchored by the guiding principle of the Rule of Law, LexisNexis South Africa recently drew on its strengths as a provider of world-class technology solutions to launch its free online Rebuilding and the Rule of Law platform in the aftermath of the civil unrest.

“The platform is designed to provide the public and organisations affected by the devastating riots with access to legal information, resources and advice as they rebuild their lives and business in the aftermath of the riots,” Proothveerajh said.

She added another exciting addition to their Rebuilding and the Rule of Law initiative was their partnership with ProBono.Org which is providing affected individuals and business owners with a free, one-hour virtual consultation with an attorney in ProBono.Org’s network.

Globally LexisNexis works to uphold the rule of law by providing regulatory content in print, digital and training formats for professionals and academics in the fields of law, tax, accounting and government. Its business and corporate social responsibility efforts are guided by the company’s common global purpose of upholding the rule of law.