Ghana largest telecom company, MTN, has built a 200 seater capacity library for students in the New Juaben Senior High School in the Eastern region. The company did this through its social wing, the MTN Ghana Foundation.
The library also has an ICT centre and a teachers’ common room included. MTN Ghana as well joined hands with Huawei Ghana to provide the school with internet service by building it fibre broadband. This kind gesture made by MTN Ghana will benefit over 2000 students in the school.
The library is completely furnished with textbooks and research materials. It also contains ebooks from reliable publishers and trustworthy databases. All these were done at the cost of GH¢602,150.
CEO of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, said the company did this to help students of this era to cultivate the habit of reading and research. He believes this will in the future have a positive impact on their generation.
“The main function of a school library is to develop the reading and research habits of students. It basically fills an information gap and helps to open the world view of students.”
“One day, I believe we will read about some great Ghanaians from this school that have innovated to impact the lives of many. This greatness will not only be linked to Ghana, not only to Africa but the whole world and I hope that we can attribute a part of that to the launch of this modern library facility and ICT centre today.”
The headmaster of the school, Frank Obeng Wilson thanked MTN Ghana Foundation for giving the school such a library. He believes the modern library and ICT centre “will bring relief to both teachers and students who previously used a room in the administration block as library and storage.”
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The Eastern Regional Minister was represented by Golda Asante at the commissioning of the facility. Asante praised the MTN Foundation for such a facility. She called on more private organisations to support development by rolling out projects like this library.
“I was very touched when I heard about the description of your former school Library and how your textbooks and other reading materials were competing with stores for space and ventilation. It is refreshing to note that, a big dream has come to reality and indeed, history has been made today because this project is very big – has many facilities and I consider it as a game changer for teachers and students of this school.”
The library commissioning ceremony was graced by some executives from both MTN Ghana and Huawei Ghana. Included are Samuel Koranteng, Corporate Services Executive, MTN Ghana; Nabila Williams, Board Member, MTN Foundation; and Ethan Liuyang, Huawei Ghana.
MTN Ghana Foundation
MTN Ghana Foundation, since its inception in 2007, has been able to carry out over 140 major projects in the country. The fields the Foundation usually helps in are health, education and economic empowerment. These projects since then can be estimated to be around GH₵33 million. The number of beneficiaries of these projects is estimated to be around 4 million.
So far, MTN Foundation has built and commissioned more than 25 ICT centres, as well as 4 modern libraries. A few months ago, the Foundation commissioned an e-library for the Takoradi Technical University.