Airtel unveils season 3 of touching lives initiative

Airtel Nigeria, a foremost telecommunication company  has launched season three of its Touching lives Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. The initiative introduced three years ago is about empowering and creating life-changing opportunities for less privileged in the society.

Speaking at the unveiling of the third edition, in Lagos, Segun Ogunsanya, CEO Airtel Nigeria, further explained that Touching lives is about creating inclusive prosperity that brings the rich and strong, poor and weak together in a virile society.

According to Ogunsanya, the launch is a call to action urging other corporate bodies in the country to key into the scheme and widens the act of giving by touching lives.  Touching lives does not depend on the economy, and “to be a great person, you need to be good; you can’t separate greatness from being good”, he said.

Speaking further on the scheme, Ogunsanya said touching lives is not only about giving to the physically challenged as the scheme also involves adopting  school initiative, and the company has been able to adopt schools across Nigeria. According to Ogunsanya, Airtel plans to spend four years in the adopted schools. “Airtel equally has an employee volunteers’ scheme that helps to pull resources together to support causes without forcing the employees to give towards such initiative.

In his comment, Frank Aigbogun, publisher of BusinessDay Newspapers, looking across the world, a lot of what companies do as CSR investment has become a stamp of what those companies stands for.

According to him, beneficiaries of the Airtel touching lives are ordinary folks, people with no connections and were delighted that Airtel has been able to inspire and impact hope in them. He therefore believed that  people owe others  good especially when they are doing better in life because there is no law or convention that compels Airtel to give back to the society.

Frank equally used the occasion to call on journalists to passionately review the programme and follow it daily to be able to tell the stories of those joyous Nigerians who hitherto had no hope of the future, but are today singing a new song of hope.

Larry Izamoje, CEO  of BrilaFM a sport radio based in Lagos said, it’s always good to touch life. According to Larry, Ronaldo has made it  today because his mother’s life was touched. Messi another product of this kind of initiative is today arguable the world’s best footballer because somebody touched his life as a child when he was suffering for  anti-growth deficiency.