The learners of Buhle Park Primary School in Germiston have received a brand-new library and resource centre this week as part of Hyundai Automotive South Africa’s corporate social investment programme.
The handover of the library is the 21st sponsorship of its kind undertaken by Hyundai Automotive SA in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea and the DP World and Motus Community Trust.
An elated Ms Rebecca Mabona, principal of Buhle Park Primary, officially received the library from Thembeka Ngubane, a finance executive at Hyundai Automotive SA, and Robert Abrahams, a trustee of the DP World and Motus Community Trust.
“When a child can read, their confidence goes up,” said Mabona in her address to representatives of Hyundai Automotive SA, DP World and Motus Community Trust and the teachers and about 1 600 learners of Buhle Park Primary. She described the gift of the library as a life-changing event, to the Buhle Park Primary learners as well as the community that serves as a catchment area for the school.
Ngubane related how the learners at the primary school in the Eastern Cape where she grew up had to listen to a teacher reading to them in a converted container classroom – “we did not have a library”. It was only in secondary school that she was introduced to a library.
“You will enter a world of adventure when you enter that library with its books,” she said to the Buhle Park Primary learners. “Reading creates a curious mind,” she said.
Ngubane said Hyundai sponsors the libraries because the company is “true to its values – specifically the value of giving back to the community”.
As part of the sponsorship the library, with about 10 000 books, is staffed by two librarians whose salary gets paid by Hyundai and the DP World and Motus Community Trust for a year. The full sponsorship is worth R1,62 million.