A drop-in centre provides a place of safety for orphans of HIV parents near Lebowa mine
We are committed to delivering improvements for the communities that surround our operations, not only to maintain our social licence to operate, but to create real opportunities for economic and social advancement.
During 2009, we introduced the Anglo American Social Way which sets out demanding minimum standards across more than 20 dimensions of social performance. By implementing these standards, we will meet or exceed a number of best practice benchmarks.
Stakeholder engagement
For us, being a good neighbour means good business and to achieve this, we need to understand the needs of our stakeholders.
The cornerstone of our stakeholder engagement process is the Socio-Economic Assessment Toolbox (SEAT) process, which was developed to improve our understanding of both the positive and negative impacts of our mining operations on our host communities.
This process helps us facilitate more structured dialogue with all our stakeholders and serves as a guideline for improving our socio-economic performance. It also helps us identify projects in partnership with our local communities that will deliver long-term benefits.
Every operation conducts the assessment every three years, which involves profiling communities and gathering information about the issues they raise.
Management responses to the concerns and priorities of stakeholders are published in a SEAT report which is distributed to all stakeholder groups, including local, provincial and national government, non-governmental organisations and interested and affected parties. The implementation of management responses generated by the process is taken forward through three-year community engagement plans which are updated annually.