12th July 2024, NewsOrient
News
By Samuel Orji, Lagos

Hill City Foundation last weekend rolled out drums to celebrate 20 years of milestone achievements of impacting lives and building capacities.

The event which brought together partners, members and beneficiaries of the foundation witnessed the issuing of Education Special Programme award to 340 beneficiaries, while, three other members were inducted. The education special programme is one of the four axises that drives the foundation .

The four axis are: The Education Support Programme ,ESP, which provides opportunities for young under privileged students to attain their tertiary education and fulfil their dreams. The Economic Empowerment programme, EEP, the Self Discovery and Personal Development Programme,SDPD, which supports young people hoping to be entrepreneurs. The Self discovery programme also helps to build membership capacity through workshops, webinars and learning jobs. Finally, is the Mentorship Programme, MP because HCF, believes in the power of mentorship.

The brain behind the foundation and the lead coordinator Engr. Obi Imemba, said, his aim for floating the foundation is to drive education as he hates to see unrealised potentials.

His words, “Hill City was born out of the challenges young people out of school face, not being able to go to school and not having anybody to show them direction. So, in Hill City we came together; a few of us and started this foundation and the whole goal is to discover, develop and deploy young people to discover their destinies”.

” We do this through educational support, sponsoring them in their University programmes, economic empowerment programme that’s start – off business and also give them mentorship. Their is a fourth programme we call self discovery. With this four programmes, which we call the four axis, we are able to develop a total base and we have been doing this for 20 years consistently”.

We have received a lot of support from people that partnered with us mainly the members and everything we’ve done so far is within those that are core members of Hill City foundation. We have not received any government support and we don’t intend to do that. We are here to provide social support to the society and not draw from government”.

He added that students beneficiaries from Hill City foundation are spread across 170 universities in Nigeria and their goal is to spread their tentacles in all the universities across Africa .To achieve this, they intend to penetrate 10 African countries by the time foundation will cloçk 25 years, though presently, the foundation is in just in one African country, which is Uganda .

There were good will messages from friends and partners of the foundation.The Abia State government represented by Mrs Ifeoma Thomas, Special Assistant to the Governor on Vulnerable Groups and Poverty Alleviation applauded the HCF team for impacting positively in the life of the people especially Abians.

The event also witnessed a panel session which had entrepreneurs like: Samuel Jegede, Funto Ibuoye, Karen Ubani- Alli, Dare Harold, Damilade Taiye and Obi Imemba , Lead Coordinator.They discussed on the theme of the anniversary “Beyond impact: harnessing & deploying the energy of the African youth for wealth creation.”

Special recognition awards were given to Andrew Kugasira from Uganda, who is also in charge of HCF, Uganda and Dr Valentine Obi, chairman advisory board, HCF Nigeria.
The ceremony held at Lagos Continental Hotel, Lagos, witnessed the cutting of the anniversary cake by the lead coordinator Engr. Imemba flanked by members of his team.

Their were testimonies from some of the beneficiaries including Chika Ubani, the planning committee chairman for this year’s anniversary.

Hill City Foundation Nigeria was inaugurated on 13 March 2004, while the Uganda arm of HCF was inaugurated in February 2019.

~ NewsOrient