…marketing
team inspires Mogra Star pupils and tips them on how to be successful in life
…slum school
is catering for some of the most underprivileged, but promising, children in
Kenya
Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications service provider with operations
in 20 countries across South Asia and Africa, made a connection with over 800
orphaned children in Mathare, by visiting Mogra Star
Airtel
Africa’s marketing team, which drives the company’s brand in the continent,
made a donation of Kshs 150,000 and other items including clothes, blankets and
toys to the children. More importantly, the team interacted with the children,
inspiring them with tips on how to build their budding potential while in
school.
Mogra Star
is located in Nairobi’s Mathare, a slum area situated three miles east of the
city’s central business district, and considered one of the worst in Africa.
Mathare is home to over 600,000 inhabitants occupying an area of two square
miles.
Airtel
Africa Chief Marketing Officer Andre Beyers, who led the team, said: “Airtel’s
marketing team has been inspired by the story of Mogra Star and its indomitable
spirit of the founder who has been selfless in nurturing the dreams of these
children. Our team’s hope is to see the institution developed in order to
secure as many lives out there in the streets as possible, and transform them
into tomorrow's leaders.”
Mr. Beyers
said the marketing team’s philanthropic gesture is a part of the company’s
larger corporate responsibility goal of supporting sustainable learning in
schools, a model that Airtel has adopted for tens of schools across Africa.
Mogra Star
Academy provides education at both primary and secondary levels and seeks to
provide a better foundation for a brighter future to the pupils and students.
The institution not only provides education but also food and shelter to the
destitute children.
The Mogra
Project was founded in 1998 as an initiative of Mrs. Hanna Njoroge. Having been
brought up in the slums, she was aware of the many children unable to go to
school because of abject poverty with their parents also unable to pay school
fees.
Mrs Njoroge
realized the children not attending school engaged in petty crime, scavenged
for food and were being forced into child labour. She set up a children’s home
in Mathare which she registered as a charitable children’s institution. She
then realized many children were unable to attend a school and so founded Mogra
Star Academy to provide free education in the Mathare slum.
Airtel
Africa’s ‘Our School’ programme involves tens of primary schools which have
been adopted in rural areas of 17 African countries where Airtel operates.
Working closely with the governments in these countries, the initiative seeks
to improve the delivery of quality education to children, especially those from
underprivileged areas. So far the schools under the programme are catering to
over 16,000 underprivileged children.
