As part of its Celebration of Service, designed to allow employees, retirees, clients and business partners, to donate their time and expertise during the company’s Centennial year, IBM last week in Lagos announced that, 300,000 IBMers around the world, close to three quarters of its global workforce were volunteering in more than 5,000 projects in 120 countries, meeting civic challenges and societal challenges serving millions in need.

Since January 2011, IBMers, retirees and their families, have donated more than 2.5 million hours of service to communities worldwide.

“To commemorate our 100 years as a corporation, IBM is setting a record for community service by sharing the best skills of our employees, making a real impact in the communities where we work and live,” Taiwo Otiti, Country General manager, IBM West Africa, told IT Journalists in a press conference last week in Lagos.

While this represents a historic and record setting amount of service, he added that what is most important is not the large number of employees volunteering nor the millions of hours of service they are providing, it is the high quality of the work that is being done.

“The impact will go far beyond the one day. We are building on our strong heritage of skills based service – a commitment that is in IBM’s DNA.”, he said.

days using the SME Toolkit to coach the entrepreneurs on various areas of business ranging from, how to write a business plan, sales and marketing and small business accounting. Each entrepreneur also had a “meet the mentor” session where IBM volunteers helped them achieve business goals;

“By bringing together its employees, retirees, partners and community members, IBM is undertaking the largest service challenge, of its kind, we have seen to date,” said Mr. Peter Bamkole, the executive director of EDC. “They are creating not only an impact on communities and small businesses, but they are applying the unique and powerful IBM assets to catalyze a movement around service. We commend them for celebrating 100 years of corporate civic leadership in such a remarkable way.” Mr. Bamkole noted that some of the challenges facing small businesses are inability to access credit, and inability to access experience – he noted that small businesses needed guidance and mentorship – that’s why the EDC is creating awareness for the SME toolkit a business tool developed by the IFC & IBM to afford small business access to much needed business forms and tools of operation.

The IBM Celebration of Service spans more than 120 countries where IBMers live and conduct business. Today, June 15, is the day before IBM officially recognizes its founding 100 years ago, and culminates months of volunteering with an official IBM Centennial Day of Service.

A selection of IBM Celebration of Service volunteer activities on June 15 include:

*Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano will teach a classroom of middle school students in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland about science and math through a discussion around Watson, the computer system that IBM invented and triumphed on the popular TV game show Jeopardy!