21 Days of Y’ello Care focuses on environment

MTN Nigeria has joined other members of the MTN Group in focus its 21 Days of Y’ello Care on environment.

The initiative which kicked off across the mobile operator’s on June 1 across its footprints in Africa and the Middle East, would see thousands of MTN staff volunteers taking part in various environmental projects, the major one of which is tree-planting initiatives for the next 21 days.

This year’s campaign theme is Making a Positive Difference to the Environment, which is in keeping with the United Nation’s declaration of 2011 as the International Year of Forests.

“We at MTN have applied our minds to the theme and found it worthy of the support of approximately 30 000 of our employees spread across our markets - from Afghanistan in the Middle East to Zambia in Africa,” says MTN Corporate Affairs Executive, Rich Mkhondo.

The staff volunteers will be joined by their executives, who will swop their suits for overalls and shovels, in an all-out tree planting exercise.

Additionally, MTN operations will roll out other environmental projects, such as environmental sanitation exercises, tree-planting, sinking of boreholes and provision of manual or solar-paneled water pumps for the purpose of watering the planted trees, and various other initiatives aimed at preserving the planet’s resources.

The overall target over the next three weeks is to plant a minimum of 21 000 trees across all the MTN operations. This translates to 1 000 trees per MTN country. However, there will be operations which will exceed this target due to the number of volunteers participating, said Mkhondo.

But MTN Nigeria CEO, Brett Goschen said the Nigerian operation plans to plant about 2,900 trees across the country in the course of the programme. According to him, each of the clusters of trees will benefit from a borehole in order to ensure their sustainability.

MTN Nigeria staff will officially kick off the programme in Lagos on June 1 with a walk aimed at drawing attention to the environment. The ‘Earth Walk’, as the initiative is tagged, will commence from the company’s Golden Plaza head office at Falomo through Alfred Rewane Road and back.

21 Days of Y’ello Care was instituted by the MTN Group President and CEO in 2007 to give all MTN employees an opportunity to contribute towards improving the welfare of their communities.

It has now become a prominent feature in MTN’s calendar, and is also one of MTN’s flagship Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes driven by MTN Foundations in the mobile operator’s markets.

“It is through interventions like 21 Days of Y’ello Care that MTN is the most admired brand and leading corporate organization in the vast majority our markets,” Mkhondo said.

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