A s a family of companies, we at the Hollywood Group are extremely proud that our Hollywoodbets My Community Programme booklet is larger than ever before! Our mission has always been to support more and more people within our communities.

Our booklet is a little more unique this time around. This is because it forms part of a “different” period, a time unlike any other we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes. We chose to incorporate all projects for the relief efforts that we launched in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Our communities were severely affected by the pandemic, and it became increasingly difficult for people to cover their basic needs. There was a huge demand from our communities for basic food items. Therefore, we felt moved to launch a nationwide food parcel relief effort.

Key partnerships played a valuable role in this process, where we joined forces with our various Brand Ambassadors. We also worked with Nomzamo Mbatha’s Lighthouse Foundation to create the Brighter Future Project which saw R1,35 million going to NPOs and NGOs across South Africa, including a contribution to the Solidarity Fund as well as the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

We want to thank our Team of Purple Hearts for braving the circumstances and enabling us to achieve this amazing feat. By working together, we provided 5 570 COVID-19 relief parcels that included personal protective equipment and helped feed 22 280 South Africans in need. We achieved this feat by partnering with 72 organisations.

Education was one of the core areas we identified to invest in so that we could help equip and empower young South Africans for the future. We teamed up with the Lighthouse Foundation, Gagasi FM, Ndungane Twins Foundation and South African Jockey Academy to award bursaries, as well as offered this to our own Team and their family members.

As always, sports development continues to remain important to us, so we expanded our sponsorships to include different sporting codes and to benefit even more teams than ever before. Seven Jockeys and 16 Trainers continue to be part of our Purple Family as well. In partnership with Gold Circle, our Grooms’ Initiative was created to award the winning groom from every KwaZulu-Natal race meeting with a R1 000 incentive. In the 2019/20 racing season, 375 different Grooms winning their share of R578 000!