STRENGTHENING THE COMMITMENT OF AFRICANS TO DO BUSINESS WITH MORAL INTEGRITY
A season of optimism and growth, such as what Africa enjoys at the moment, is at the same time a season for ethical leadership and wise stewardship. The Business Ethics Network of Africa (BEN-Africa) speaks to this imperative by strengthening the commitment and competence of Africans to do business with moral integrity. This is done through robust dialogue and collaboration amongst Africans sharing a commitment to sustainable development through ethical and responsible business practices.
The dialogue takes the shape of many engagement initiatives such as the annual conference hosted by the Business Ethics Network Africa (BEN-Africa).
As BEN-Africa convenes in Stellenbosch South Africa this year (2014) the conference theme will be Equal in an Unequal World. The aim of the meeting will be to pursue answers to the question on how to guide business in eliminating unjust inequalities, and promoting sustainable development and an economy based on fundamental ethical values. The conference programme is planned around the following activities:
- Keynote addresses that will focus on Quality Education in an Unequal Society; Bridging Inequality through Philanthropy and Global Responses to Inequality from a Business Ethics Perspective.
- Panel discussions on Inequality Challenges in the African Context and Business and Business Education: Stretching or Bridging inequality?
- Learning journeys to sites where conference participants will engage with the manifestations of inequality in the South African society
- Papers based on the conference theme presented by scholars from various countries.
- A gala dinner where thought and practice leaders in business ethics will be honoured.
The 14th annual BEN-Africa conference will take place at the STIAS Wallenberg Centre, Stellenbosch Cape Town, South Africa from 1-3 October 2014. Registrations are currently open online via http://www.benafrica.org/join-us/ben-africa-conference-registration-2014.
Conference costs applicable are in accordance with the following registration categories:
Full Conference – R2 400.00
Full Conference for students & NGO’s – R1 800.00
Day visitor – R800.00 Gala Dinner only – R500.00
All information regarding registration and the conference programme is available on www.benafrica.org. For any enquiries, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Released by: Gecko Connect Stacy De Villiers | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | 061 448 6433 On behalf of: BEN-Africa www.benafrica.org
NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEAVE O.R. TAMBO EMPTY HANDED
Travellers visiting South Africa’s principal aiport, O.R Tambo International (ORTIA) in Johannesburg, no longer have to find themselves leaving empty handed. By participating in the Don’t leave empty handed promotion they can now qualify to claim the perfect travel accessory, namely a genuine men’s or ladies’ wallet from the bespoke fashion and lifestyle brand POLO. This premium product is valued at R695 and is yours if you’ve spent R7500 or more in one day collectively at any store at O.R Tambo International Airport’s Duty Free Mall.
O.R. Tambo International Airport is the air transport hub of Southern Africa, catering for more than 17 million passengers each year. The airport boasts a world-class variety of amenities, business centres, retail centres, restaurants and bars, as well as a five-star hotel. The Duty Free Mall includes a wide selection of duty free retailers, offering you ample choices to make the perfect purchase or enjoy services tailored for your convenience. From favourite brands, to exclusive airport offers and products of the month, at O.R Tambo International Airport’s Duty Free Mall travellers can enjoy a world-class shopping experience and now with the Don’t leave empty handed promotion, also receive the perfect reward.
To enter, submit a fully completed entry form, including till slips adding up to the minimum spend of R7 500.00. Only original entries and proof of purchases will be accepted and excludes any purchases at jewellery stores. The offer is valid from 5 April to 30 June 2014, or until stocks last. T&C’s apply. http://www.saairports.com/or-tambo-international-airport/events
The promotion is run by Airports Company South Africa and the officially appointed advertising agency Kwenda Marketing.
For more information contact the Kwenda Marketing team on 011 921 6408. Visit Facebook www.facebook.com/ClickBuyFly or follow @ClickBuyFly on Twitter for upcoming competitions, promotions and events.
About www.saairports.co.za Discover a magical journey and indulge in the splendour that is Africa whilst you browse through the new website (www.saairports.co.za), the gateway to South Africa's premier airport shopping experience. Whether as a first-time traveller or seasoned globetrotter, be it for business or pleasure, visit the website before your next travel through South Africa's flagship airports in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban so that you can get the most out of your airport shopping experience and prepare for your next voyage.
About Airports Company South Africa Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) operates South Africa’s nine principal airports, providing airlines with world-class, secure infrastructure.Additional information can be found at www.saairports.com/about-acsa.
End Media release issued byDTMSA on behalf of KWENDA MARKETING AND O.R TAMBO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. For press assistance contact Maya Setti on +27 21 419 2699 (Cape Town) or Karen du Toit on +27 83 685 6406 (Johannesburg) or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Somerset West’s Own Indie Game Studio
Indie games are fast becoming a trend in South Africa, catching on from the overseas markets. These days, children and adults alike are playing mobile games as never before. People are always hungry for something different, which is where indie games – or ‘independent’ games – come in, providing players with something other than the mass-produced mainstream products.
Now, Somerset West can boast with its very own game studio that started turning its cogs in February this year. For its first month of existence, the studio was run out of the founder’s mother’s basement – typical indie game studio protocol, if history is anything to go by. Now, running from a house close to De Hoop Primary School, the studio focuses on creating mobile games (such as their recently released Afrikaans game, Fanie de Beer) and has oodles of style, creativity, skill and initiative.
While the Apmil Game Studio has only been up and running for a few months, the people who daily put their shoulders to its wheels have been building up relationships for the last three-and-a-half years. Even though the studio officially started up in February, the idea of an indie game studio had been brewing in the mind of Studio Head, Pierre Bezuidenhout, since 2011. Pierre started lecturing in the Animation Department of Cape Town’s City Varsity in 2011 – and this is where he met the three students who would later join him in this grand venture.
Pierre, as leader of the team, is Apmil’s Programmer and Technical Director. He has previously worked in advertising and animation for Wicked Pixels in Woodstock and held the position of lecturer at Concept Interactive as well as at City Varsity. His impressive skill set includes a sharp eye for detail as well as design flair and programming aptitude in different digital languages and platforms – he is also quite the people-person. Altus Barry is the Technical Lead, taking charge of rigs, renders and other related tasks. Mabet van Zijl did her major in 3D Narrative and, as Generalist, leads Apmil’s marketing and writing in between her usual workload. Louren Hattingh takes the roles of Lead Animator and Concept Artist. While each person has their area to lead, the workflow runs with a ‘rock-paper-scissors’-style in which one falls under the delegation of another while dealing with respective area-specific tasks. Sitting around a whiteboard, each armed with a marker, they discuss character design, story line, player motivation, level arrangement, time constraints and load division before jumping in with the actual development.
The first released game, Fanie de Beer, is a 100% physics-driven, full 3D, indie puzzle game with a distinct South African flavour. Playing as Fanie de Beer, a 12-year-old farm-boy, the player utilizes simple little rocks by tapping once on the screen to clear best friend Jaco Kriel’s fields of strategically placed, ancient landmines. Built in Unity, the game takes place in a single day – with the story starting early in the morning and ending in the evening – transporting the player through a dynamic day/night cycle and colourful, saturated farm fields as they progress through the 84 levels, meeting new mine types and increasingly difficult challenges as they go along. Written and designed in Afrikaans, then carefully translated into true farm-style English, this game is unique, fun and proudly South African. The demo is available for download from the Google Play Store, while the full game can be purchased on Samsung Apps and Amazon.
The next game in the pipeline is different from Fanie de Beer in virtually every way. Where Fanie is a very colourful 3D puzzle game with just enough back-story to set the player up for the context and flavour of the game, the current project is a heavily story-driven platform-game that takes place in a fictional world made up of parallaxing silhouettes and strange characters.
Apmil Game Studio has not only been created as a platform to build games, but also as a springboard for fellow animators, developers, designers and illustrators. It’s a breeding ground for collaboration, ideas, innovation and learning. Each person hones their skills while doing fun and challenging work through creating games and stories as well as fulfilling the creative needs of small to medium-sized businesses in the Western Cape and Gauteng.
Apmil Game Studio services include animation, app creation, game creation, rendering/stills, asset creation, video editing and UX. The creative division of Apmil, led by artist Janet Botes and writer Michelle Albinson, offers logo design, graphic design, online/web design, interactive design, writing, editing, proofreading and illustration.
Apmil prides itself on being different: Fresh ideas, innovative applications, strange and wonderful games – they are all things that receive the studio’s love and attention to detail. To find out more or to get involved, contact Pierre Bezuidenhout at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call him on 082 499 3133
Studio ingredients:[A]ltus makes the bus and [P]ierre drives the bus; [M]abet takes the bus t[i]ckets and [L]ouren makes the bus move. Thus, [apmil].
Free demo: Google Play – bit.ly/fanie_demo
Full version: Samsung Apps – bit.ly/fanie
Official Trailer: Youtube – bit.ly/fanie_trailer
Apmil page: Apmil/Fanie – apmil.co.za/fanie-de-beer
Neurologist turned teacher to explain “aha moment” at African EduWeek in July
Conference and expo to provide practical and relevant support to teachers
A neurologist who became a classroom teacher will explain how best to stimulate young people’s brains to process information into knowledge and wisdom during the upcoming SABC Education African EduWeek in Johannesburg in July.
Thousands of teachers and education experts will attend the annual conference and expo from 10-11 July at the Sandton Convention Centre for an interactive gathering that will empower them through technology, skills and interaction with their peers.
One of the African EduWeek keynote speakers in the opening session is Dr Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist in California, who left her practice after 15 years to become a teacher. At the time she says there was a marked increase of children being referred to her with suspected neurological conditions, and she discovered that this was due to the vast amount of material that students had to learn at school.
Dr Willis explains: “I realised that these stresses of frustration and boredom had wiped out the joy of learning and kids were unable to be engaged in learning through curiosity, but instead by drill and forced memorization. I felt that this was something I could make a difference in and influence a better way of teaching.”
She continues: “I believed that because as a neurologist I had a strong background in things like memory and how the brain processes information, I felt that if I had the opportunity to become a classroom teacher and receive the training, I could take what I know in neuroscience and see if it worked with students in the classroom and that’s what I did.”
Having ideas coming together in ‘aha moment’
Dr Willis taught for ten years to 2nd grade, 5th grade and 7th grade mathematics. “During this time I was delighted by the power of neuroscience to shine a light and suggest strategies from education that would be most correlated with the neuroscience research that was increasing in quantity and with more specificity, thanks to neuro-imaging. So as I found correlations between strategies and neuroscience research that guided me to apply certain strategies at different intervals depending on what the brain responded to best.”
She eventually gave up teaching children, reluctantly, but today enjoys sharing her insights with fellow educators. “I have always loved watching learners experience the thrill of developing their own knowledge, of discovering, of capturing the meaning of something, of having ideas come together in an ‘aha moment’. That same joy is my greatest pleasure in teaching other educators now. It’s seeing the ‘aha moment’ when they realize that their best strategies, things that have been most successful, are indeed highly supported by the neuroscience research. It is not that neuroscience is suggesting a whole new way of teaching, but the excitement to me is when educators recognize the “why”.
Read and hear the full interview with Dr Judy Willis as part of the African EduWeek expert interview series on www.educationweek.co.za/interviews
More African EduWeek opening session highlights:
Chairman: Graeme Bloch, Independent Education Specialist
• African Education Update: Is Africa’s education potential beyond the Millennium Development Goals being met?
Panel of experts includes:
o Edem Adubra, Chief of Section, International Taskforce on Teachers, UNESCO, France
o Prof. Rehabeam Auala, Professor of Educational Management and Leadership, University of Namibia, Namibia
o Marius Ehrenreich, President, South Africa Principles Association, South Africa
• Breaking boundaries and reaching your full potential
Sheri Brynard, Teacher, South Africa – first person with Downs syndrome to qualify as a teacher
African EduWeek dates and location:
Expo and conference: 10-11 July
Pre-conference: 9 July 2014
Venue: Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
Website: www.educationweek.co.za
Twitter: https://twitter.com/education_week
Contact:
Communications manager: Annemarie Roodbol
Telephone : +27 21 700 3558
Mobile: +27 82 562 7844
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How to Survive a Heart Attack - Step 1
How to Survive a Heart attack - Step 1: Just Breathe!
How to Have a Heart AttackStep 1: Just Breathe!
by Hendrik Baird
Having a heart attack is no joke. Ask me. I've just had one.
Not a light heart attack, not a heart murmur, but a full on, massive Myocardial Infarction.
The type of heart attack where you start saying goodbye to the people around you, because you realise that you are about to die. The kind where you can't breathe, where your chest is about to explode, where your reality suddenly spins out of control.
We all have to die at some point. We both accept and ignore this inevitable fact. We all know that everybody will die; we just conveniently forget to remember that this will happen to me, too.So what do you do when you suddenly find yourself in a "this is it" situation? How do you react?
I felt both determined to stay alive and at the same time resigned to the fact that I was, in fact, in the process of dying. I had the clarity of mind to have my son, who was with me at the time, call a friend of mine for help. I wanted to stay alive!
Yet as the minutes ticked by and I could no longer breathe, during those long agonising moments when there was no more breath, I had to make peace with my own mortality, and quickly too! Even though we were speeding through traffic to get to the hospital, I resigned myself to the fact that I would not make it. This was the end.At the same time remembering something I read on Facebook once, about coughing when you are having a heart attack, as it stimulates the heart muscle to contract and helps with breathing. (Easier said on Facebook than actually done in the throes of a full-scale cardiac episode! Yet I think this saved my life, because after doing it a few times the tension eased up a little as we approached the hospital and I could breathe again.)
It literally was a delicate balancing act between life and death. For that one crisis-filled hour I tottered from one to the other. In the end it was time that saved me. I will forever be thankful to my dear friend who rushed through afternoon traffic to the hospital. If it had taken any longer to reach help, the damage might have been much more severe and indeed could have led to my early expiry due to lack of oxygen.So here is the first lesson in surviving a heart attack: Just breathe! (Even if it means coughing to keep the breath going!)
I have been asked if I view my own mortality differently now because of what happened. Strangely I don't think the severity of what has happened has fully made itself known yet, it being revealed slowly, incrementally, through small daily realisations.I have been told it will take at least a year for it to fully sink in.
So how does one survive such an event and its consequences? Are there ways to ease some aspects of surgery and manage the pain? Can you speed up the healing process? How do you survive the tedium of waiting at a state hospital? And how do you survive the food?
As a way to deal with what has happened, and at the same time as an insight to someone else who might have had a similar experience, or perhaps even for someone who sometime in the future might need this information: There is to follow a few weekly articles about various aspects of surviving a heart attack.I will share the techniques I used from time to time to deal with various issues, for instance in dealing with daily injections or to manage post-operative pain and infection. I will share my own thoughts and feelings and the insights of those who supported me and carried me through these past few months.
At various times during the weeks that I spent in hospital, several of my friends commented that they knew somebody who had gone through the same thing as I and that they were doing so well after successful surgery similar to mine. This reassured me. I have a similar intention in writing this. To reassure you that everything will be all right. I have been there. I have survived, for now. Use what you can from my experience.
A heart attack changes your life. As a survivor you have to face the consequences. You have to make changes. I am facing the consequences head-on, taking it one day at a time. For the moment, I am here, in this moment.
Soon we will all die. Me too. But for the moment I will just breathe. While I breathe, I am still alive.
So just breathe!
© www.hypnosis-works.co.za 25/05/2014
