Vodafone Ghana Foundation commissions volunteers for communal NGO assistance

The Vodafone Ghana Foundation (VGF) on Thursday, launched and sent off 30 volunteers to provide technical and professional expertise to some selected Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to help effect change in the lives of people.

The programme, operating under the Vodafone World of Difference Project, seeks to support NGOs with the services of professionals whose services were often very expensive for them to afford, to help them develop and provide practical solutions to their projects in their chosen communities of operation across the country.

The volunteers which included doctors, teachers, broadcasters, journalists, football administrators, nurses, social workers and lecturers are expected to bring their experience and knowledge to bear on the work of the NGOs they had opted to work with to help change the lives of their chosen communities.

Mr. Kyle Whitehill, Chief Executive Officer, Vodafone Ghana, explained that the project was an annual event aimed at bringing corporate philanthropy to a new level where individual professionals stepped out of their regular jobs for a period of two months and get into peri-urban and rural areas.

He said it was also a way of renewing the spirit of volunteerism in the country while reshaping the approach of corporate entities to helping the needy in society.

Ms. Afua Amankwah Sarkodie, Secretary to Vodafone Ghana Foundation, said the innovative programme currently operates in 17 countries across the world saying in Ghana a total of 150,000 Ghana Cedis would be spent on the project and expressed the hope that volunteers would bring a swift and sustained change to the lives of NGOs and particularly the communities in which they operate.

She said to make their work pleasurable, volunteers would be given financial incentives ranging between GHc1,000 and GHc2,000 a month, depending upon their proposed area of work.

Dr. Kobina Quansah, Board Chairman of VGF, thanked the volunteers for their selflessness and enthusiasm and appealed to the NGOs to make it admirable for others to follow suit.

He announced that applications were still opened for professionals who would also want to dedicate their knowledge for the benefit of the less privileged in the society to do so through the Foundation’s project.

The volunteers were presented with “survivors’ packs” which contained a polo shirts, mugs, pens, pen drives, notebooks, internet enabled mobile phones and customised Vodafone umbrellas.

Source: GNA