By Emmanuel Elebeke

As part of its renewed drive to take its corporate responsibilities to a new level, MTN Nigeria last week unveiled MTN Foundation view book tagged, “A hand and Smile”.

L_R:, EVC, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah; Chairman, MTN Nigeria Mr. Pascal Dozie; Director, MTN Foundation ,Mr. Dennis Okolo,; Chairman, MTN Foundation Ambassador Hamzat Ahmadu, and Mr. Tunde Folawiyo, Director, MTN Nigeria at the launch of MTN Foundation’s View Book in Lagos at the weekend.

The view book is an apt and correct description of the organic linkage between lending a hand and extraordinary power of transformation.

MTN Nigeria Corporate Service Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck while speaking at the formal unveiling of the view book at Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos described the viewbook as the company’s essence of MTN for operating in Nigeria and its commitment in the area of corporate social investments in MTN Nigeria’s moral license to operate.

Goodluck explained that the unveiling of the foundation viewbook is MTN Nigeria’s philosophical belief that the long term success of its business is inextricably linked to the viability of the society in which it operates and it is about doing good and touching lives and supporting the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for the socio-economic development of Nigeria and impliedly for the sustainability of MTN Nigeria.

According to him, since 2004 the board of MTN Nigeria has committed 1% of MTN’”s profit after tax, to the foundation and since then, the foundation footprint has been established in all the states and the federal capital territory, with 292 projects sites in partnership with over 30 different project partners over the years and the MTN Foundation viewbook offers a glimpse into how the Foundation has altered the lives of the a small number of the millions of lives that have been touched. It is about the lives of particular individuals, in their own voices, telling their own unique story, many of them in profoundly moving way.”

MTN Foundation Chairman, Ambassador Hamzat Ahmadu, said that the viewbook “A hand and a Smile”, is about that story, the unveiling story of relationships, relationships between people within each community, between communities and MTN Foundation and more importantly, the relationship between the desire to give and the need tio receive, and offer a visual platform for communicating the breadth and depth of MTN Foundation’s distinct activities and its impact.

While giving the foundation report from the inception, the Executive Secretary of MTN Foundation, Ms. Nonny Ugboma said that the foundation has focused its efforts on the core areas of education, economic development and healthcare care because these areas are key indices of development and would give impetus to Nigeria’s attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.

She explained that under this foundation’s project, 129,283 school students and 6,086 teachers in 62 public secondary schools across 15 states and FCT enjoy facilities ,which bridge the digital and knowledge divide, 4500 men and women across 28 states of the country has been empowered with a mobile phone, recharge cards, promotional materials as well as training on basic accounting principles and customer services, and over 1,154 HIV positive mothers and 1,229 babies have benefitted from the foundation’s prevention of mother to child transmission programme, while 260 people living with HIV have been successfully trained in various income generating skills.