Story: Mary Ankrah
United Way Ghana (UWG), in partnership with its stakeholders, has held a Valentine’s Day celebration dubbed, “Day of Caring”, to exhibit love to underprivileged communities across the country.
With funding support from corporate organisations, including Millicom Ghana Limited, operators of tiGO, Stanbic Bank, Barclays Bank, UT Holdings, Cummins Ghana, GAME, Maxmart, Printex and Coca-Cola Equatorial, the day was marked with lots of smiles on the faces of the beneficiaries, including the Qubbatul Khadrah School at Nima, the Mother Teresa School for Girls at Senya Bereku, the Krobo Odumasi Orphanage and the Countryside Orphanage, Bawjiase.
The rest are the Akropong School for the Blind, the Orthopaedic Training Centre in Nsawam, Basic International, a non-governmental organisation, among others.
Other corporate partners were the Melcom Group, Coral Paint, Safoa Enterprise, BBC Industrial Company, Miniplast and others.
The UWG is a not-for-profit agency that collaborates with corporate and charitable institutions to support the sustainable development of communities in the areas of health, education and income generation.
The President of the UWG Governing Council, Ms Juliet Tuakli, said the organisation was established in November 2003 by a group of dedicated corporate and community leaders in Ghana and had been successful in establishing a network of corporate institutions that supported community investment projects and provided a platform from which communities could mobilise resources, strengthen their foundation and continue on the road to self-sufficiency.
During a visit to Senya Bereku in the Central Region yesterday, the members of staff of tiGO took time off their busy schedule to visit the Mother Teresa School for Girls to offer voluntary service there and make donations.
The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Co-ordinator of tiGO, Mr Tuffour Mensa-Bonsu, said this year’s tiGO CSR programme was on education, children and health.
The volunteer staff, therefore, helped the school paint some of the blocks, clean the entire school compound, fix broken desks and supply the school with computers to complete its computer lab.
Several books and souvenirs, including schoolbags, water bottles and other items, were given to the pupils to aid teaching and learning.
Mr Mensa-Bonsu explained that the company chose the Mother Teresa School for Girls to check the sustainability of the project it started last year which included a fence demarcation of the school compound.
According to Headmistress of the school, Ms Nefissa Haruna, the school was established by the late Kwesi Essel Koomson in 1998 with the intention of helping eliminate poverty, especially among women in the community.
She said the school was started as a private one, with funding support from corporate bodies, until the government took over in 2001.
It enrols children from the kindergarten to the junior high school levels.
Ms Haruna stated that there were several challenges the school was facing, among them the lack of funds to complete certain projects, the lack of classroom space and a library.
She appealed to private organisations to form a lasting partnership with the school and applauded tiGO and the UWG for the gesture to the school and urged tiGO to continue to support the school.
For his part, the Executive Director of the UWG, Mr Jonathan Akuamoah, called on all companies and corporate bodies to join the UWG to continually show love and support to underprivileged communities in the country.
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