A team of volunteers from Old Mutual Personal Financial Advice’s Centurion branch ran a project for their Care and Share initiative to fix up Optima’s kitchen a bit. Care and Share is a voluntary project by Old Mutual staff members where they develop projects and resources to benefit creditable organisations or projects.

When one of the volunteers, Carin de Kock, visited us on a previous occasion she saw blind students walking around with pots of just cooked food, taking it to their rooms, and decided to do something about the situation. They fixed up the Optima kitchen, supplying new kitchen utensils and a lovely new microwave oven. They also brought practical new furniture for the adjacent dining room. Now the students can sit around the new tables and enjoy their meals while socialising, after they have cooked in the communal kitchen.

It is not the first time they have helped us! Old Mutual Personal Financial Advice’s Centurion branch also offered volunteer services and helped with arrangements for our White Cane Safety Day walk and picnic on 15 October as part of their contribution to this year’s Do It Day initiative. They also sponsored the picnic food.

We are very grateful that they are spending their time and resources on bettering the lives of our students and other visually impaired persons! Also to Old Mutual who makes it possible for their employees to contribute in this way.