Fairheads is probably not the only player in the beneficiary and trust fund industry to feel that 18 as the age of majority is too young.

The Chlldren’s Act of 2007 brought the age of majority down from 21 to 18. While it may make economic sense to expand the group of financially active people (and political sense to increase the voting pool), how many young people of 18 are able to handle large payouts on termination of their beneficiary fund or umbrella trust? It is not uncommon for service providers like Fairheads to pay out R100 000 or more on termination of accounts.

Just think about the educational realities. It is estimated that only half the children who start school actually get to matric. Of that half, only 70% pass. So the number of 18-year olds with a decent education and the ability to make sound financial or business decisions is very low.

There are also social realities. According to a recent report by the SA Institute of Race Relations, some 15 million people are now on social grants. Children on the child support grant account for 70% of all people on social welfare and the number of social grants for children has risen 13-fold since 2011. You can imagine the family pressures on 18-year-olds who receive large payouts to use the funds for the family, instead of investing them for tertiary education or seed capital for a small business, for example. Some guardians and caregivers even adopt the mindset of “we got by without a good education, why should you be any different?”

Fairheads makes a point of counseling beneficiaries and members before their funds terminate, in order to encourage them to use the funds wisely. Beneficiaries, as adults by law at 18, are obviously free to do what they wish with the funds but we have a huge sense of futility when we hear that people have dropped out of school when they receive a lump sum. Fairheads saw some 4 000 guardians last year in a series of guardian workshops around the country, (click here to see related article) many of whom were unhappy with the majority age of 18. There were countless stories of guardians not even knowing that funds had been received only to find they had been squandered on fast living.

I would go as far as to say that, given South Africa’s developmental realities, paying large lump sums to many 18-year olds is tantamount to killing that person’s future.

Fairheads would like to start a formal lobbying process for an exemption to the age of majority for trusts and beneficiary funds to run until 21. We believe that those extra three years could give thousands of young people time to think carefully and be more mature about how to use lump sum payouts.

If you have any views or would like to join the lobbying process, please contact me, Giselle Gould, on giselle@fairheads.com

The guardian workshops that Fairheads held between September and November last year were hugely successful. The logistics of the exercise were a real challenge but we conclude that nothing can beat the value of face to face contact. Guardians had a chance to ask questions and we were able to further educate and assist them. These interactions provided the opportunity to further improve communication as well as services provided.

Key statistics

• Regions visited: 11 (8 provinces, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland)
• No of workshops held: 31
• Number of attendees: 4 352
• Number of Fairheads staff involved: 40
• Newspaper announcements: 15
• Notification sms’s sent: 54 103

Feedback from the guardians :

• workshops were helpful, easy to understand and want more workshops
• they want regular workshops in strategic locations
• sms contact worked well and needs to continue
• more information on termination of accounts and how to counsel beneficiaries who turn 18
• more communication in their own language

Fairheads has :

• learnt to empathise on a greater level with increased humility
• gained a deeper understanding of guardian needs
• put in place plans to improve and create effective communication channels

Poverty continues to be one of the major challenges in South Africa. While charitable donations and aid play an important role in bringing relief to the destitute, it is not enough to uplift and empower the disadvantaged communities in our country. Enterprise development is an option that empowers not only previously disadvantaged entrepreneurs but also the communities in which they operate.

Fairheads has partnered with The Business Place Network (TBP), a network of eight business places located nationally in Southern Africa. TBP operates in the economic sector which has the potential to significantly address unemployment and poverty. Support for this massive job creation sector is vital.

It is a real privilege for Fairheads to be able to contribute directly to specific projects that will provide infrastructural support to local entrepreneurs. We agreed in 2011 to fund the establishment of an Entrepreneurial Village in Philippi, Cape Town, as TBP -Philippi continues to receive requests for office and retail space from a range of local businesses. This project has had good feedback from local entrepreneurs and Alan Fleming, a Director at TBP- Philippi, who said:

“Due to Fairheads’ incredible donation in the 2010/11 financial year, we were able to provide container-based accommodation for three local businesses, in the first phase of our long-planned Entrepreneurial Village constructed from architecturally-designed and renovated containers. This donation provided two 12m renovated shipping containers, placed in a retail setting within the existing business park, fully provisioned with power and security.

"Fairheads representatives Marilyn Brown and Nikki Jacobs met the entrepreneurs who are now operating their businesses out of the containers purchased and renovated with the previous tranche of funding from Fairheads. One of these entrepreneurs, Simphiwe Mthywa, is a skilled shoe-maker, shoe-repairer and locksmith – with a great attitude and a huge smile. He used to run the Barksole franchise in Brackenfell, but always dreamt of his own business. Now, he has it, and works seven days a week in his shop. But one element is missing – the keys and the key cutting machine.”

Fairheads has committed to the second phase of this project that will see the provision of further retail space as well as the purchase of a key cutting machine for Simphiwe so that he can expand his business to include key cutting services.

Fairheads has also provided funding to the TBP in Johannesburg for specific projects identified in that region. Read about these in the next Fairheads Times!

Enterprise Development is an element of the B-BBEE scorecard. Fairheads is committed to comply with the B-BBEE Codes of Good Conduct as is evident in our most recent scorecard where we obtained a Level 3 status.

To read more about the Business Place and what they do click here

Article by Marilyn Brown, Financial Director of Fairheads Benefit Services

Fairheads made a donation to the Kliptown Youth Program (KYP) as part of our corporate social responsibility for 2011. The funds allocated to assist with the KYP tutoring program stemmed from Fairheads’ decision to donate funds to an educational cause instead of an elaborate stand at the 2011 IRF Conference.

Kliptown is a township situated adjacent to Soweto, yet it has no electricity, no basic sanitation, schools or clinics. There are 45 000 people living in the township and there is an unemployment rate of up to 80%. The teenage pregnancy rate is 60% and the HIV/AIDS infection rate 25%. The children walk up to an hour to get to the nearest school.
KYP’s mission is to eradicate poverty of mind, body and soul and to fight the disadvantages imposed on the children of Kliptown by providing educational support and positive activities to engage in after school. Among other projects, they run academic tutoring for grades 1 to12.

Nikki Jacobs, Fairheads Times editor, visited KYP with her family in December together with Giselle Gould, Fairheads Business Development Director. Nikki had the following comments:

"Nothing prepared me for what I witnessed in this township. There is still so much to do in our country and whilst we have made positive steps toward building our nation, there are little pockets of communities that are overlooked and the harshness of their lives is nothing we can even imagine.

"Thulani Modondo and his team at KYP do a phenomenal job and I was completely in awe of them, from their boardroom in a bungalow to the kitchen in a container with no electricity, to their solar powered television in a room with broken windows and their library neatly stacked with books waiting to be read."

Fairheads’ support of the KYP tutoring project is in line with our CSI themes of education and youth.

To see the KYP website click here.

Fairheads Times carries beneficiary case studies from time to time. In this way readers can get a glimpse into the frequently very difficult circumstances of our clients. Here is an account by Mpuseng Sekaleli, client liaison officer in Fairheads Johannesburg office, about how she managed to trace a beneficiary while she was on leave.

“As part of my commitment to at least visit or trace one beneficiary when I am in my home town of Kroonstad, I decided to trace a certain beneficiary whose trust was long overdue for termination as she had turned 18. This was one of those cases where we had never managed to trace the beneficiary despite countless attempts. The initial address and cellphone numbers we were given yielded no response. Meanwhile, the the amount unclaimed and due for payment was R50 000

So there I was in Kroonstead on leave, determined to trace the beneficiary. The house for the address we had on the system was deserted, there is only a brick wall, no fencing and no-one stays there – which I of course found after more than two hours looking for the address. After asking around about the guardian and beneficiary, one of the neighbours gave me a lead of where I might find them.

It was another hassle to find the new address. It is also a rented place with more than five tenants in the yard. The guardian and the beneficiary were not home but I left the message with one of the other tenants on 29 December 2011.

The very same day, the guardian contacted me that she got my message and we agreed to meet on 3 January at 17h00. At the meeting were the guardian, the beneficiary and elder brother. The guardian works as a general worker at a chicken company in Kroonstad and the beneficiary is doing odd jobs since she dropped out of school at Grade 10 in 2008 due to financial constraints. She is a well behaved young lady and her mother is doing her best to keep the fire burning.

They knew that the deceased member left some money for the children even though they were divorced but due to family disputes from the deceased member’s family they did not know where or how to find help.
The police refused to help them with affidavits as they didn’t have the original death certificate, nor the ID book of the deceased which the deceased’s mother had and refused to give to them.

You can imagine how happy the beneficiary was to hear the news. She completed the necessary information and opened a bank account into which the payment has been made. She plans to use the some of the funds to attend a skills development course to enable her to get a better job.”

Santa Shoebox started in 2006 in Cape Town but soon became a national project. In 2011 over 70 000 shoeboxes were pledged and handed out to children around the country.

Over the past years Fairheads has created shoeboxes to take to homes and orphanages. This year we adopted a class from Paarl School which caters for children with cerebral palsy, specific learning disabilities and physical disablements.

Each box contained toothpaste and a toothbrush, soap and a washcloth, an article of clothing, educational supplies, sweets and a toy. Much fun was had at Fairheads in wrapping and preparing all the boxes and at the end of the exercise each child in the class received a Christmas box.

For the second year running the men, known as Mo Bros, of Fairheads have taken part in the worldwide movement called Movember.

Movember started in Melbourne, Australia eight years ago and has become an international event. For the month of November men around the world grow their moustaches in order to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues. To date more than 1.1 million people have participated, raising over a billion rand.

13 Mo Bros from Fairheads all arrived at work on 1 November with clean shaven faces to begin their campaign of raising funds. They raised an impressive amount of R1 430 which was matched by the company and a total of R3 000 was donated to the campaign.

The funds raised in South Africa support the number one and two male-specific cancers - prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA). Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are support a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes.

The Fairheads training team, Robyn Crompton and Lalannie Knoll, are working hard to make sure training programmes are suited to our clients’ needs.

In 2011 we rolled out a major training initiative, or learnership, to our contact centre staff as well as to all job levels across the operational departments as these staff members are at the front line when it comes to dealing with clients.

Learners were tasked with many assignments including listening and rating their own calls to clients as well as making presentations to management. Several thought-provoking challenges have resulted.

One of these is a need to look at the manner in which we speak to our clients on the telephone. There are definite techniques and behaviours developed in the areas of customer service and telephone etiquette that we can adopt to offer our clients a quality service and we will be working at this in 2012.

Another result of the learnership was a presentation that acknowledged the diversity of cultures that exist within the client base of Fairheads and South Africa. This highlighted some discrepancies between our expectations and our understanding of the various cultural traditions of our clients. The guardian workshops held towards the end of 2011 further confirmed this.

The workshops were life-changing! They gave us real and vivid insights into the lives of our beneficiaries and guardians and the situations they face. Meeting face to face with those whom we service and communicate with made us realise that there are some gaps to fill.

These results and realisations create the 2012 training challenge! For example, how do we further transform detailed financial statements and procedures for clients who have English as a third or fourth language, of which we have come a long way. How do we find the balance between prioritising education as a basic need when in reality the tradition of transitioning from a ‘boy to man’ is deemed as a basic need to some of our clients?

Training has to tackle the challenge of how we converse with our clients – from business English to plain language or perhaps in their mother tongue. We need to equip our staff to serve clients with the best knowledge of our product, deliver our message across to our target clients and do so in as polite and as customer centric manner as possible.