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.