WATCH | Santam empowers vulnerable communities to safeguard what really matters

Most schools have fire safety drills to teach learners what to do in the unfortunate event of a life-threatening emergency. The drills kick off with the sound of an alarm — but imagine if you couldn’t hear this siren during a crisis.

The thought of learners not hearing a siren was an anxiety-inducing concern for the staff, parents and students of the Yingisani Special School for the Hearing Impaired in Tzaneen. This special-needs education centre for deaf learners includes a boarding facility, providing children with the ideal environment to learn to sign by living alongside their peers.

Adding to their worries, the location of the primary school — close to the bush — makes it particularly susceptible to fires, floods, windstorms and other hazards.

“We didn’t have a fire extinguisher for every class. We had the siren, but [learners] cannot hear [it],” says principal Kholisa Tilly Khumalo.

As a responsible corporate citizen, Santam, SA’s leading general insurer, stepped in to help. 

Santam provided Yingisani Special School with much-needed additional fire extinguishers, but with smoke alarms attached to sirens, and strobe lights. These flashing lights act as an early warning system, enabling learners to quickly evacuate in an emergency.

"[Santam] did a good job here. They showed us that even if you are differently abled, [they’re] still there for you,” says Khumalo.

That’s because Santam knows the most vulnerable members of our society are the most susceptible to risk — and the most deprived of the insurance security blanket when it’s really needed.

“We pay billions of rand in claims every year, where we give back into society to drive the economy and help [Santam customers] recover from their adversities, but those are not the only people that are important to us,” says Moatlhodi Dilotsotlhe, Santam executive.

P4RR is there for you

Disasters such as fires and floods affect the livelihood of South Africans and have a huge social impact on the poor, elderly and other vulnerable groups. Helping to eradicate the threat of such catastrophes goes a long way in empowering communities to safeguard what’s really important — and this is the focus of Santam’s Partnership For Risk and Resilience (P4RR) programme.

Since 2012, the insurer has invested R100m in its P4RR programme, partnering with 82 municipalities across SA to improve emergency-response and disaster-management capabilities within vulnerable communities such as informal settlements.

It has worked with municipalities, fire services and volunteers to, for instance, install smoke detectors in shacks and host fire-awareness training for community members and their children.

Santam-sponsored skid units — self-contained portable firefighting tools — have been provided to fire departments to enable rescue workers to access areas in crowded informal settlements that can’t be reached with conventional fire trucks.

Meanwhile firefighters and other emergency-service providers have benefited from attending disaster simulations, which give them the opportunity to train and practice their response protocols.

The collective work put in by Santam and its partners to implement early warning systems and help communities proactively manage the risk of fires and floods has benefited the lives of more than 5-million South Africans — and counting.

Click here for more information about Santam’s corporate social investment (CSI) initiatives.

This article was paid for by Santam.