Telecommunication company, MTN Nigeria, has reassured its unwavering commitment to the development of its host communities.
The firm made this known recently at a colourful ceremony held to conclude the 2019 edition of its 21 Days of Y’ello Care.
The annual event provided an opportunity for MTN employees to participate in various community projects that aligned with the programme’s theme, “Creating a Brighter Future for the youths”.
This year, the initiative shifted attention on youth development with special focus on developing Nigeria’s burgeoning tech ecosystem for greater impact in national development.
One of the highlights of the programme was a hackathon challenge where young software developers were tasked to create critical solutions to health problems using technology.
The challenge was won by a 24 year old Computer Science graduate, Richard Igbiriki, who developed a mobile app – BloodShare, that provides hospitals with location-based blood donors, allowing patients to quickly find donors in times of emergency.
For the feat, he was rewarded with N100,000, a laptop, $15,000 Cloud Facility Credit, and access to receive pre-equity funding up to $25,000 from Chinook Capital Investment Fund.
The firm also held a digital media training session for a select group of young Nigerians to educate them on how to become suicide prevention media advocates.
Speaking at the ceremony, MTN Nigeria’s CEO, Ferdi Moolman, commended the staff for coming up with the initiative and their consistency since inception.
He mentioned that their various interventions, especially in reaching out and partnering with schools as well as building skill acquisition centres among others were impactful.
He said: “Visiting one of the schools brought home the realisation of how blessed we are to live, work and operate in Nigeria.“
We are here today to count our blessings and celebrate the opportunity to give back to our communities where we serve. This is the real spirit of MTN and what we are about.”
