The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown regulations created new challenges for businesses and programmes globally, with Discovery ForGood (Discovery’s Employee Volunteer Programme) being no exception. The Discovery ForGood team rallied to create a COVID-19 response that would continue to make volunteering opportunities available for Discovery’s people in line with our core purpose, while accounting for the constraints of the pandemic.

Food insecurity has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Given that Discovery Forum events were not taking place, the head of the Forum team opted to utilise their skills by preparing and distributing meals to selected non-profit organisations referred by the Discovery ForGood team. By 3 July 2020, 6 747 food packs have been distributed.

As detailed in the COVID-19 section of this report, employees also donated to the Solidarity Fund, matched rand-for-rand by the Discovery Fund.

Continuing our work in Orange Farm, Discovery senior usability analyst Ashnee Gounden and her team spearheaded a design thinking mentorship programme at the Aha Thuto Secondary School for Orange Farm youth participants. It covered how to research and design innovative solutions to problems by using the principles of design thinking.