Community

The AngloGold Ashanti Fund is the primary vehicle for the group's social initiatives in southern Africa. During 2004, the Fund distributed R16.148 million ($2.59 million) to a wide range of projects across the region - primarily in those areas where the company operates and the regions from which it draws its employees and where many employees families reside. The Fund's primary areas of activity are:

• education
• health care
• skills training and job creation
• welfare and development
• HIV/AIDS

The AngloGold Ashanti Fund has a responsive philosophy to community-initiated projects, and a belief that development works best where people are empowered to work towards their own advancement and where ownership of the initiatives rests either with the individuals or with the communities responsible for those initiatives. The Fund aims to provide constructive support for sustainable projects which contribute to the region's longer-term well-being and development. Successful projects do far more than simply identify a need - they assign resources and people to address that need. It is also important that they are rooted in the communities they serve, providing for practical interventions of a scale and at a pace that beneficiaries can absorb and utilise.

The AngloGold Ashanti Fund is managed by Tshikululu Social Investments with a professional management team at the helm.

An important change for the Fund in the past year has been the increasing emphasis placed on the Local Area committees. These comprise operational personnel who are in close contact with the regions and communities in which they operate and are able to better advise on local needs. A concern has been that the Fund is not close enough to the communities and people that it is contributing to and it is hoped that the role of the local area committees will grow and achieve this. In addition, in South Africa, relationships with local authorities have been strengthened by the appointment of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) manager, Butiki Loliwe. He works with a small team whose duties include ensuring a closer alignment between the fund's activities and the local authorities' Integrated Development Plans.

Some of the major projects that received approval by the Trustees during the year include:

• The Ergo programme. (See case study: Ergo programme focuses on maths and science education.) The fund has committed R2 million ($310,000) per year over three years.
• Inyatelo Public School, located in Kanana in North West. The school services a large residential area near a number of AngloGold Ashanti operations in the Klerksdorp area. The funds (some R2.5 million or $390,000) have been allocated for the building of additional classrooms and toilet facilities.
• Hospice North West cares for community members who are terminally ill in the areas surrounding the company's operations near Carletonville and Klerksdorp. The fund has awarded R300,000 per year for three years
• A number of "Special Relationship Schools", located close to company operations in the Carletonville and Klerksdorp area have been supported with funds amounting to R1 million ($160,000).