EXSA NEWS

Giving back to the community

Londocor Event Management initiated a new, eco-friendly way of exhibiting. After organising hundreds of congresses over 27 years, and seeing the wastage after each congress, Londocor decided to introduce a new and novel way to give back to the community.

By Sonja du Plessis, managing director of Londocor Event Management (Pty) Ltd.

In 2021, the organising committee for the National Psychiatry Congress proposed a congress where they could drastically reduce its carbon and plastic footprint. Londocor suggested a novel idea of building sustainable, environmentally friendly, nonplastic stands, with the aim of reusing the material towards a classroom building project to support a local community.

All exhibition stands were built by an accredited housing company that were then assembled onsite, dressed, and branded by BB Projects and handed over to each exhibitor.

The exhibition stands were disassembled after the congress and transported to Amahlubi Secondary School and were reused to build beautiful classrooms for this very needy secondary school. The classrooms were fitted with all the wooden furniture from the exhibition stands, including tables, chairs, bookshelves, counters, lights, etc. All congress bags were also donated to the school. The congress participants eagerly contributed towards the needs of the community by donating shoes, clothes, tinned food, toiletries, etc.

An additional amount of R185,000 was also raised at the congress dinner, from participants, to build bathrooms for the school.

Since 2021, most of their other congresses have followed suit and are enthusiastically supported by delegates, trade and most certainly appreciated by the community to which these structures are donated and have been used to build clinics, shelters for abused women and children, community halls and storerooms.