With over 90 million children in Africa without a writing surface at schools and over 400 million children worldwide, the TutuDesk Campaign aims to provide disadvantaged schools with instant infrastructure provision for children, in the form of flat structures to rest on scholars’ laps. The TutuDesks also provide a far greater reach in a shorter time for funds invested by donors. Without a writing surface, students will be compromised at their places of learning.

The 200 TutuDesks donated to the Protea Primary School forms part of Grant Thornton’s focus of promoting education within underprivileged areas. Funds were raised at Grant Thornton International’s 2010 conference which was attended by over 500 partners and staff from around the world, who all donated generously to the CSI element of the proceedings. Grant Thornton South Africa is the 5th largest audit firm in South Africa by fee income (according to the October 2011 International Accounting Bulletin).

In the next five years, the TutuDesk Campaign endeavours to provide a further 20 million TutuDesks to significantly improve learning conditions for children in Africa.

The 200 TutuDesks were handed over to the staff and pupils of Protea Primary School on 5 December 2011.

Neil Miller, joint managing partner of Grant Thornton Cape said: “We at Grant Thornton believe that the upliftment of communities starts with education – we are committed to showing our unyielding support in promoting education within underprivileged communities.”

Neil Miller concluded the handover adding that Grant Thornton has more donations in the pipeline, which further substantiates its commitment to supporting education in underprivileged areas on an ongoing basis.

The Protea Primary School’s staff were exceptionally grateful to receive such indispensable teaching tools and said that this donation would encourage the school’s pupils to do their school work in the classroom as well as at home.

Photographs from the handover

The theme for World AIDS Day 2011 in South Africa is about “Getting to Zero.” Zero New HIV Infections. Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS Related Deaths.

Facts about HIV / Aids
HIV is not passed on through spitting, biting, or sharing utensils
You can get the results of an HIV test in just 15-20 minutes
There is still no vaccine nor cure for HIV

Investing in our community
Grant Thornton cares about its community. Staff are buying red ribbons and making donations to show their support for the fight against HIV/Aids and for the people living with it. All proceeds will be donated to Tateni Home Care Nursing Services.

Tateni Home Care Nursing Services supports the HIV/AIDS infected and affected chronically and terminally ill people and their families, including orphans and vulnerable children.

AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue. – Nelson Mandela

For an able-bodied individual, the Public Practice Examination (PPE) is not an easy exam to pass, but Joseph Komape overcame his disability and passed on his first attempt. The PPE is a test of candidates’ professional competence and the quality of training received from the various firms has a significant influence on their results.

“Being sent out to audit clients lifts my morale, knowing that my firm believes in me and that clients accept being audited by the blind. The message is that if I can do it, so can anyone else,” remarked an overwhelmed Joseph.

Joseph, who lost his sight at age 5 after contracting measles, is aided by a voice synthesizer that reads electronic documents to him. Grant Thornton employs Obert Mudau, a first year Bcom student, to be Jospeh’s ‘eyes’, assisting him in conducting his audit work.

Grant Thornton is the only firm outside the “Big 4” to have candidates ranked in the “Top Ten”. Johannesburg trainee Justin Goldberg was placed third overall, while Vaughan Grandin from Durban came eighth.

“Obviously I am very excited that all my hard work has paid dividends” said a somewhat relieved Justin Goldberg. Justin has ten months of his traineeship left before he can use the CA (SA) designation behind his name.

Vaughan Grandin says, “The nature of auditing is that you don’t know whether you have passed or failed. The most important thing is to not stop believing in yourself.”

Clifford Amoils, head of audit, Grant Thornton Johannesburg says, “We are very proud of our successful candidates and our PPE results prove that Grant Thornton provides high quality, broad-based training catering to the needs of the individual.”

Grant Thornton consistently has candidates in the “Top Ten”, and thus attracts outstanding people, ultimately providing top class service to clients.

Profile – Joseph Komape
Joseph opted to pursue a career in accountancy because “he wanted to do something different; something perceived as outside the norm or ability of a blind person.”

With an A-aggregate in Economics, History, Typing, English, Afrikaans and Northern Sotho, Joseph whizzed through his matric in 1993, giving him the confidence to believe that he could cope with anything. For his tertiary studies, he applied to and was accepted by Wits University, where – because mathematics was not one of his matric subjects – he had to complete a year’s bridging course. He joined the university’s Disabled Students Programme, which converted all study material into brail.

In 1995, he started his BAcc, majoring in Finance and Economics. Accounting was a compulsory first year subject, which he passed, thereby acquiring the motivation to carry on. His subsequent major choices were influenced by his conviction that he stood a greater chance of getting a job as an auditor than as, for example, an economist. All of this begs the question of how Joseph studies.

He says: “Sighted people think that the blind have some extra memory space or something. I mean, you first become blind and then you realise that you need to compensate for your blindness to cope. So you rely on your memory.”

Joseph prefers to commit information to memory rather than making notes on his computer – which reads material once to him for sense. On the second reading, he is then able to extract the relevant information. Blind students are given the option of whether they would like to study using audiotapes or a computer voice synthesizer, which is a software program loaded onto a computer. When information is fed in, the computer will verbalise the contents for the listener. Also, when typing information, the computer will sound out each letter as it is typed.

Joseph’s passion is tax consulting because it affects everyday life and is more scenario-based than auditing. Pure auditing is heavily reliant on sight in terms of checking the evidence and examining and re-examining figures.