Accra, April 29, GNA - The MTN Ghana Foundation, an umbrella body which directs and manages MTN's social responsibility programmes, on Wednesday held a workshop to educate the public on guidelines to consider when writing project proposals to it for consideration. The workshop, which is a nationwide programme and the fourth in the series, was also aimed at educating the public on the company's corporate social responsibility focus areas and how to streamline their project proposals to fall within those focus areas. The Foundation currently focuses on health and education to complement government's agenda to improve living conditions of the people.

Mr. Frazier Malcolm Appeadu, Administrator and Coordinator of the Foundation, who took the participants through the guidelines in Accra, urged them to make their proposals catchy and straight forward to the intervention programmes they wanted the company to assist them to implement so as to improve quality of life of the people. Mr Appeadu also urged them not to submit proposals which sought to benefit members of a particular political party but to ensure that their proposals fell in line with government's programmes to improve quality of life as contained in the Millennium Development Goals.

He said the Foundation received several proposals annually but most of them failed to meet the demands of the company's focus areas. Mr Appeadu said even though some of the proposals contained laudable ideas they often lacked implementation and sustainability strategies making the Foundation not to select them for implementation. He said others also reached the Foundation late and sometimes with no addresses making them to automatically lose out when it came to selection.

Mr Appeadu said the Foundation's Directors met quarterly to select proposals for implementation. He reiterated the company's commitment to improving the quality of life of people through implementing appropriate social intervention programmes in its catchment areas.

Currently, the company is refurbishing the second floor of the Labour Ward of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra and is also building ICT centres in deprived communities across the country. 29 April 09