NBC answers Don Bosco cry with Tshs. 4 Million

11 July, 2005

The National Bank of Commerce (NBC) Ltd. today announced a Tshs. 4 million donation to a Dar-es-Salaam-based center for disadvantaged children, Friends of Don Bosco, towards the payment of school fees for 150 children.

Speaking at the handover ceremony held at the Friends of Don Bosco offices in Tabata, Dares-Salaam, NBC Marketing Manager William Kallaghe said his bank decided to support the center to help less fortunate children pay school fees.

“NBC is not a stranger to educational support in Tanzania. The Friends of Don Bosco are our old friends and we have supported them in the past. We recognize the good work that they are doing in addressing the needs of disadvantaged children. When they approached us with a list of over 150 children who were going to be sent home for failing to pay school fees, we decided to make a difference by making this donation.”

Friends of Don Bosco founder and director Evans Tegete thanked NBC for its unparalleled and continued support. He said: “NBC has shown the way as a good corporate citizen. We are grateful to NBC for this support. The children we look after are disadvantaged and orphaned. Some of them are former street children and drug addicts and we work to rehabilitate them. We teach them life skills and we sent them to school. I’m proud to say that the support we received from NBC in 2003 has seen one of our children, Nicodemus Thomas, admitted at the University of Dar-es-Salaam where he is now a second year student, taking Mass Communications.”

Kallaghe said NBC supports community development by entering into partnerships with like-minded non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The bank does not support individuals but channels its support through established NGOs throughout Tanzania.

Said Kallaghe: “NBC is a Tanzanian national bank with a heart for Tanzania. We have a long and strong history (and a bright future for that matter) of doing business in this country. We have come a long way and we definitely haven’t come this far alone. That is why we have established a deliberate Corporate Social Investment (CSI) policy aimed at enabling the development of the community in which we do business. Our CSI policy has three key focus areas, namely education, job creation and health. Over the last five years NBC has invested several hundreds of millions of T-shillings in these three sectors. To date, the largest single corporate social investment by NBC is in health where the bank donated four fully fledged state-of-the-art mobile clinics worth nearly Tshs. 250 million, a first in the history of Tanzania,” Kallaghe said.