Master of Ceremonies
Honourable Executive Mayor for Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Municipality
Acting HOD for the Social Development Branch, Mr Malaka
Executive Managers of the Department
MMCs and other councillors present this evening
Members of the governance structures
Community Leaders – our traditional leaders
Members of our various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs)
Our community development workers
All competing projects for this evening’s awards ceremony
Members of the media
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Dumelang Bagaetsho!
It is indeed an honour this evening to meet with all of you here in Taung for yet another important occasion. It is these types of occasions where we celebrate our achievement as the department and our partners that we become proud of what we do to improve the lives of our people. This is a very special occasion to me and I thank you all for having made it possible. Last year, we were in Klerksdorp when I urge all Community Builder of Year competing projects and individuals to go back and do more to excel in helping the department to deliver quality services to our people.
This government as led by the African National Congress has since 1994 been working tirelessly to improve the health and social conditions of our people. Guided by the constitution of the Republic and the Freedom Charter, we believe we will eventually meet all the basic needs of our citizens. Various initiatives have been established to fast track our quest for quality service delivery. Community building has become one of the vehicles upon which we can better deliver quality health and social developmental services to our people.
I therefore get extremely overjoyed every time the department takes time to recognize and honour milestones achieved by our own communities through various organisations and individuals that we are sponsoring to deliver quality services and improve the lives of our people.I was just part of another award ceremony, the Early Childhood Development Awards that was hosted by our private sector partner ABSA. It shows that we are in this together and I must once more applaud partners like ABSA and the Sowetan for their role in community building.
I have always stated that I have a great deal of passion in building, serving and developing our communities. The Community Builder of the Year Awards that we are hosting this evening will certainly go a long way in fulfilling this passion. I take this opportunity to honour men and women who are making a meaningful contribution to the lives of our people by dedicating their energy to building, serving and developing our communities.
I say well done to all the projects that have made it thus far. You have been through the District Awards events and triumphed there. That is achievement and you deserve applaud for that.You have shown that you share my passion and the country’s vision of a better life for all. Our province is vastly rural with high levels of poverty in some areas that are far away from us. In some cases destitute families struggle to have access to our services. We need partners in our own communities to be extension of the arm of government, so that we may reach where we were unable to reach before.
We also know that a lot has been done to push back the frontiers of poverty, to develop the lives of our people and to improve their socio economic status. We must also agree that a lot still needs to be done to advance the course of a better life for all and for us to advance this course; we need support and commitment from various stakeholders. When individual men and women stand up and get counted, we get confident we will achieve. In contributing to our course of pushing back the frontier of poverty and improving the socio-economic lives of our people, there are individuals, organisations and projects which have dedicated themselves to community building.
You deserve recognition, acknowledgement and reward. I hope with this award ceremony all individuals, organisations and projects will be inspired to do more for our communities and to understand that we need each other as partners with one common goal of improving the lives of our people.
Working together we can do more to improve the lives of our communities.
I thank you!
Province
