Plan Ghana, an international community-development organization, has joined the list of reputable organisations, to participate in the Ghana Edition of the West African Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Community Development Conference slated for June.

The West African CSR & Community Development Conference is a sub-regional thought-leadership platform aimed at sustainable development of West Africa by creating awareness, discussing and sharing best CSR and community development practices across the sub-region.

A statement from the West African Centre for CSR and Community Development, the organizers of the Conference said "it is open to companies in Ghana and stakeholders in the CSR and community development spectrum and would host speakers and facilitators from the academia, industry, business, civil society, international development agencies and the media.

“We believe that Plan’s vast experience in mobilizing marginalized communities for their own development will be invaluable to the CSR & Community Development Conference”, the statement quoted Mr Prem Shukla, Country Director of Plan Ghana as saying.

The Country Director said Plan Ghana’s goal is to have long-term strategic partnership with Corporate Ghana and to bridge the gap between the marginalised communities, and Corporate Ghana by providing technical support in strategy, implementation and evaluation of CSR projects.

He said the success story of Plan Ghana, which now impacted over 500 deprived rural communities across seven regions in Ghana, could be replicated with the support of stakeholders, especially corporate Ghana.

The statement said Ghana’s edition of the West African CSR Excellence Awards would be launched at the conference to identify, verify, evaluate and reward socially-responsible activities of companies in Ghana and the sub-region which contributed to national and sub-regional growth and prosperity.

According to Mr Kojo Williams, Lead Project Manager for the Conference, “‘The Ghana CSR Diary & Awards initiative had evolved into a sub-regional agenda of West African CSR Conferences and Awards.

Since 2011 when the initiative was jointly launched by the former President of the Association of Ghana Industries, Nana Owusu-Afari and the former Minister for Trade & Industry, Hannah Tetteh, more than 60 blue-chips, SMEs and socially-responsible companies out of about 500 other applicants, had their CSR activities verified, evaluated and awarded.”