Sterling One Foundation Wins CSR Award, Advocates Partnership

Olaoluwakitan Babatunde

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sterling One Foundation, Mrs. Olapeju Ibekwe, has bemoaned the Human Poverty Index (HPI) which ranked Nigeria as the poverty capital of the world. She called on corporate organisations, as well as well-meaning individuals to invest in social impact programmes that will change the country’s poverty index ranking into a positive one.

This was as she reiterated that more would be done and achieved in social impact space through partnerships that incorporate the public and private sectors as well as well meaning individuals. She said it will make life more meaningful and bearable for the less privileged in the society.

Mrs. Ibekwe made the call at the AS+A Communication 2021 CSR Forum Exhibition and Awards, which took place at the Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, where the Foundation was bestowed with an award in recognition of its social impact contribution to the society via the creation of the first free crowdfunding platform in Africa known as giving.ng.

The theme of the forum was: “Fostering Sustainable CSR and Focusing on the Environment, Gender, Educational and Developmental Legacies.”
According to her, giving.ng is a digital fundraising platform where people raise funds and donate to the causes they care about.

She further explained that giving.ng founded in 2019 under the auspices of the Sterling One Foundation, was created out of the pressing need to change lives and create positive impact leveraging both local and international partnerships.

While reiterating that local communities needed much more investments than they are currently getting, she hinted that giving.ng is also the only crowdfunding platform in the world that gives grants, and projects can get grants to the tune of N1 million for critical sectors such as health, education, renewable energy, and food security which are vital for the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Since the government cannot do it alone, the Chief Executive Officer pointed out that the foundation is interested in working with partners – individual partners, corporate partners, and non-governmental organisations through the platform, as well as alumni associations to raise funds so as to collectively create positive change in the society together.

As part of the activities and interventions of giving.ng, Mrs. Ibekwe recalled how the foundation in January 2020, donated food items and other materials to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) at Kutara Tataradna Camp in Nasarawa State through donations from Nigerians in partnership with the Nasarawa state government.

According to her, over 800 persons including women and children at the IDPs camp got food items to aid nutrition of the community, while giving.ng also raised funds for frontline health workers’ under the auspices of the Health Workers Fund in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. N100,000 was paid to over 150 health workers monthly to supplement the N5,000 the government was paying them as hazard allowance.

“We realised that so many health workers risked their lives daily during the heat of the pandemic and even now. We had to pay each of the health workers a minimum of N100,000 monthly for a minimum of 3 months. Over 150 of them benefitted from the health workers’ funds in different Isolation Centres across the federation,” she added.

Mrs. Ibekwe, who also recalled how the foundation, early this year raised funds through the platform for a five-year-old girl (Chijioke) that had cancer and tumor, however, expressed delight that the girl is now better and in a stable condition. This was in partnership with the St. Cyril Cancer Foundation.

On the need for Nigerians, corporate organisations, international and non-governmental organisations to come together to positively impact the people, she described such an initiative as the future, and about collective responsibility, saying the giving.ng platform enables everybody to take collective responsibility to empower women and youths with a view to reducing poverty and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 2030.