Social Responsibility
Creating value for our customers and the community
ACA Threads’ vision is to build social responsibility and environmental sustainability into each business function and process. By making sustainability an integral part of our technologies, systems and products, we not only help protect and preserve our planet and its resources, but we create value for our customers and the community.
These are some of our recent sustainability initiatives to help achieve this:
Rally to READ
The Rally to Read primary school education project supports rural schools in South Africa with carefully selected resource and teacher training, encouraging literacy development and a love of reading amongst rural children.
The Western Cape Rally Host facilitates the collaboration of like-minded funding partners to support and enhance the quality of education provided in rural Western Cape schools, and to help ensure that “no child is left behind”.
Cavalleria School
ACA Threads has used the income received from the sale of waste materials to sponsor Cavalleria School in Wallacedene. The sponsorship includes sports equipment, learning aids, educational tours and visits to the Aquarium, Robben Island etc. A recycling centre has been set up at the school to teach learners how to recycle and help clean up the neighbourhood, which also generates much needed funds for the school. The 8-year sponsorship amounts to R236 000.
Watsonia Primary School
Watsonia Primary School is an educational institution with many trying circumstances and challenges. Many of their learners are from impoverished areas where the basics are absent. They are a no-fee school and therefore also rely on voluntary financial donations of the parents. The majority of the parents and guardians are battling to even make a minimum monetary contribution hence also relying on contributions from various companies or individuals.
ACA Threads were pleased and honoured to be part of this project and donated R35,000,00 on 23 April 2021. After that, a second donation of R5,000,00 was donated to Watsonia Primary school on 25 June 2021.
The school needed a second duplicating machine as the first has reached its end of service after almost ten years. These duplicators are used at schools daily and are an integral part of the education of our learners. The Riso SF5030 Risograph, is one of the latest generation duplicators and was bought at a cost of R 34 995,00
Positive Beadwork
ACA Threads gives regularly of our CF Yarn leftovers to the Positive Beadwork Project. The project provides HIV/AIDS affected mothers with training and the raw materials to produce beadwork at home. Kidzpositive buys products as they are completed, giving the mothers an opportunity to generate income to support their families and regain a sense of dignity and pride. The project, which currently has over 100 mothers making money through it, is purely a job creation enterprise and up to 80% of the purchase price goes directly to the mothers.
Youth Sports Development
Proceeds of the recycling project have sponsored a number of youth sports development programmes with Shaddy Chiefs Football Club and Kraaifontein Primary School amongst the beneficiaries. ACA Threads believes that sport has the power to positively change young lives and empower the youth to recognise the opportunity to use sport as an introduction to education and learning initiatives. Giving these kids the opportunity to be part of a team also helps develop and nurture many life skills that can bring other positive changes in their lives and communities.
Lesotho School Project
Letlotlo Primary School is a small school situated at Ha Nyenye, near Maputsoe in Lesotho. The school caters for the very poorest section of the community and a number of the pupils are orphans with both parents dead due to the HIV Aids epidemic. The majority of parents here do not have permanent employment and the school has to provide meals to all pupils. This project is run in conjunction with our major customer, Jonsson Workwear, and the proceeds from cleaning, sorting and recycling empty thread cones are paid over to the school.
Yarn Donations
Sewing thread and yarn is regularly donated to a variety of charities and organisations that use these products to produce garments, bags, beadwork articles and so on. End uses have been found for yarn and other textile waste products and these are given to our sewing thread customers that make items like punch bags and sports training equipment.
Spool Cleaning
ACA Thread’s collaboration with the Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme has resulted in an ongoing spool cleaning project that involves the removal of labels and the cleaning of empty cones and spools to prepare them for reuse. We offer to buy back empty spools from customers, send them to various organisations for handicapped people and pay these organisations for preparing the spools for reuse. In many cases these institutions are also customers of ACA Threads, who include The Association for the Physically Disabled in Port Elizabeth, The Worcester School for the Blind and the Dorothea School for the Handicapped in Stellenbosch.
The project has reduced the volume of waste sent to landfills, lowered the company’s energy costs and carbon emissions, saved our customers money and assisted disabled people to find meaningful employment.
