Unilever employees partner RecyclePoint, Polly Alakija

Employees of Unilever Nigeria Plc have partnered RecyclePoint and Polly Alakija to create a sustainable environment for children of Ken-Ade Private School in Makoko, Lagos. This is a demonstration of Unilever’s commitment to making sustainable living commonplace.

The tripartite partnership started with a sanitation exercise at the school premises and was followed up with sinking a borehole and building a fence for the school.

Ogedi-Alakwe Nsima, marketing director foods, Unilever Ghana Nigeria, said the partnership was in furtherance of Unilever’s Perfect City community outreach initiative to the school. Perfect City is one of Unilever’s initiatives to drive Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP).

“Through this initiative, we leverage on community insights to drive inclusive market growth and development while improving livelihood and wellbeing through our brands,” Nsima said.

“In demonstration of this, we have spent quality time at the school to clean the premises. We have also built a borehole and a fence to make the environment hygienic and suitable for learning for the children.”

The highpoint of the partnership was a creative art/painting session with Polly Alakija. The session, tagged ‘Empower the next Picasso’, saw the children using Unilever’s product wrappers to make artworks of different shapes and sizes. The wrappers were gathered through an internal campaign that encouraged employees to bring their product wrappers to work for this purpose.

“This has revealed that by creating the right environment and providing support through basic amenities and mentorship, every child can discover their talent that would help them to achieve their full potential,” Ayodele Aburo, sustainable business manager, Unilever Ghana Nigeria, said at the creative art/painting session.

“While on the one hand they were having fun playing with wrappers of our products, on the other hand they demonstrated their creativity by turning those wrappers to artwork designs of Nigerian map and globe-like objects,” she said.

From simple paintings, Aburo said, the children turned their school wall to graffiti with a message of hands and oral hygiene that reminds them to constantly wash their hands and brush their teeth twice daily to stay healthy always.

Nnenna Ikpeme, Perfect City manager, customer development, Unilever Nigeria, said the Unilever employees counted themselves privileged and grateful to have worked with RecyclePoint, Polly Alakija and volunteers to make their little contribution of making the school environment safer and healthier for the children.

“Together, we have demonstrated that we can bring to life our vision of making Sustainable Living Commonplace,” Ikpeme said.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU