One of our most important goals at Kumba Iron Ore, a business unit of Anglo American, is to build a stronger South Africa. And we believe the best way to do so is by helping make sure all South Africans can lead healthy lives.

Each of us plays a role in helping our host communities when it comes to healthcare. By going to work every day, our people enable us to contribute to the health of their communities. But we also recognise the need for a partner that can make a real difference across the country.

In particular, a partner that can help the hundreds of children and young adults who live with leukaemia and other life-threatening blood disorders.

The Sunflower Fund was the perfect candidate. Since 1999, they have worked hard to increase the South African Bone Marrow Registry. This is potentially one of our country’s biggest assets: a database that can help find a matching life-saving bone marrow stem cell donor.

Partnering with them meant finding out more about the challenges they face: such as that at the moment, this registry has 65,000 donors, but is not fully representational of South Africa’s demographics. A real concern, when you learn that the chances of finding a match within one ethnic group is 1 in 100,000.

The Sunflower Fund needs to recruit 100,000 people within each of the four prominent ethnic groups. Which is why we have donated R3.5 million to the Fund. The money will be used to educate and enlist healthy, committed donors and pay for the tissue typing of these donors at a cost of R1,000 each.

Then more children, and their parents, will be able to celebrate a donor being found. It means a possibility for these children and young adults to lead a full and normal life.

It is only through successful partnerships that we can touch the lives of more and more South Africans. Together with the Sunflower Fund, we are able to offer something worth much more than money: a chance.