The Digicel PNG Foundation launched its 2020-2021 Annual Report today, boasting an investment of over K139 million, over a span of thirteen years.
The 2020-2021 Annual Report was launched in the presence of its company dignitaries, and foundation beneficiaries and partners.
Digicel Foundation Board Chairman, Michael Henao in his opening remarks said that since the launch of the foundation in October 2008, the foundation has invested a total of K139.8m into 553 projects that has impacted over 900, 000 lives.
This has been achieved across the length and breadth of Papua New Guinea, with its footprint impressed upon the coastal sands and the mountain clays of all 89 districts of the country.
“Our patron Mr Denis O’Brien said that where the business grows so too must our communities grow. This annual report is the culmination of the most recent of the foundations achievements for the period 2020-2021. It provides a snap shot for the financial year and it attests to the tremendous work of the foundation team with the wider support of our partners, our contractors and the greater Digicel family,” said Mr Henao.
Mr Henao mentioned that the year 2021 has been a uniquely challenging one not only for the foundation but for all of humanity. Despite that being so, the foundation has continued to take leaps and bounds in order to ensure that the growth of the communities that it serves continues unabated.
CEO of Digicel PNG Foundation, Serena Sasingian stated that the foundation is proud of the impact the foundation has had on communities as it continues to invest in them.
“Now when I think of the words that describe the beginning of the 2020-2021 financial year, I think of words like unpredictable, crazy, challenging but more importantly I also think of words like perseverance, adaptability, change and growth. It’s a time where truly the world changed, and we all had to learn how to adjust and live with that change. So I thank all of you for your patience as you worked with us through the last financial year and I also thank you for pressing on and achieving some of the great results that are captured here in this annual report.”
Ms Sasingian highlighted some of the key achievements of the foundation stating also that having the best job in the world has allowed them to go out and identify people and individuals that are creating change on the ground, saying that it was not only organizations that made this a reality.
One of the highlights being education, where the foundation has trained 84 teachers through their Early Childhood Education Program and also the newly introduced Literacy Enrichment and Educational Development Program that focuses on strengthening child literacy for students in elementary schools.
Digicel PNG CEO, Colin Stone was very happy with the work of the foundation saying that the Annual Report depicts the achievements of the Digicel PNG Foundation from April 2020 to March 2021, and that its work is based off the ethos of patron Denis O’Brien ‘As Digicel grows so must the communities that we serve’.
Mr Stone said the achievements stated is over 10% of the country’s population that has been impacted by the great work of the current foundation team and those that have gone before them.
“Let’s not forget that this has been a journey of not just one year, the annual report that we are talking about, but this has been a journey of multiple years.”
“680 classrooms, 66 community learning centres, 33 libraries, 13 rural aidposts and 43 mobile health clinics. Those numbers are small but when you look at the impact that it’s had across Papua New Guinea, I think that impact is very large,” said Mr Stone.