Five charity organisations get N5m donation

Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) Nigeria has donated N5 million to five charity organisations.

Among the organisation which benefitted from the charity donation, which is in its third year, are Adebola Ogunlabi ( 24 year-old orphan in dire need of a kidney transplant), Pink Oak Cancer Trust, The Special Foundation, Stand to End Rape Initiative (S.T.E.R) and The Adekunle Child Foundation (TACF).

Speaking when the donation was made on Saturday, Obioma Upa, partner, corporate responsibility leader PwC Nigeria, said this year’s theme “PwC 5-for-5 Walk for Charity,” was chosen to encourage physical well-being which took place in Lagos and Abuja simultaneously.

“You know everyone goes to work and sits at their desk and work and work, we want to encourage physical well-being. For you to be well totally, you have to be well health-wise, you have to be financially well, you have to be emotionally well and mentally well so this would tick so many boxes for us because it ticks the physical well-being for us, it ticks the emotional connection with the society,” he said

“It does for us a lot more than just physical work, we are connecting with society, we are feeling fulfilled, the people who have come here today feel fulfilled, they feel happy, last year we had a dance foundation, we worked with them, we connected with them, we danced with them, it’s a connection, people feel happy when they come walk.”

Explaining the selection process, Upa, said the staff and alumni come up with interested list of charities and the top five gets picked for the donation.

“What we do is that we ask our staff members to come up with the charities that they know about and they want us to support for the year and we poll the results we get and then the top five are the ones that walk with us on the day,” he said.

“So as staff, it is what they want to support so sometimes, people are passionate about a particular cause, sometimes it’s experience, it’s what they know and it’s what they’ve seen somebody suffer from and they are passionate about it and sometimes it’s the urgency or circumstance that prompts the selection. We don’t know why people select what they select. For instance last year there was also a cancer charity that was selected as well you can see obviously that Cancer is one of the things people want to talk about. There was shelter for Abused women last year, this year we have Stand for It, obviously that is a cause that people are passionate about and then there are things about youth development and all that.

“And also the donations we make today are donations from the staff and alumni of PWC. What we try to do is try to raise at least N 1 million for each of the five charities that we work for.”

Laz Eze, executive director of the Pink Oak Cancer Trust, while commending PwC for the support, said the donation will be used to fund two surgeries in waiting.

“Our foundation raises money and we use it to sponsor persons with cancer, especially those in the early stages, to sponsor their treatment, that’s essentially what we do and this year alone, we have provided that support to 19 persons with cancer,” he said.

“We’ll keep doing what we are currently doing. Cancer is very expensive to treat, the amount might not even be enough for two doses of drugs that a breast cancer patient requires, one dose is about N617,000 but it can do radiotherapy for one cancer patient that costs N850,000 in Lagos or N800,000 in Abuja. It can also fund surgeries for 2 or 3 cancer patients so we are going to deploy these funds as we have like 10 applications that are pending now and we also require resources to help these ones.”

Amina Yesuf,  a volunteer for Stand to End Rape initiative (S.T.E.R) described the donation as a plus to their organisation saying it will help in the cause of rehabilitating survivors of gender based violence.

“We advocate for sexual rights, we assist survivors with medical, legal and psychological  support and we work with different communities within Nigeria to come up with plans that will work with each community because every community is unique. We work with different communities to give them tools they can implement. Like when a situation occurs they will know what to do,” she said.

“This PwC donation came at the right time as we’re trying to branch out more, we are currently in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. We’ve had numerous rape cases in the last five years of our existence, I can’t even put a number to it. We have cases come in daily. When the BBC #SexForGrades came up, there was serious influx of cases coming in at that time.”